


The Old College Try

by caloriebomb



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Belly Kink, Chubby Gansey, Feeding, Feeding Kink, Humiliation, M/M, Weight Gain, because that, is there a name for a rich-boys-wasting-money-kink?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-08 09:30:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 35,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14102463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caloriebomb/pseuds/caloriebomb
Summary: "Ronan Lynch liked fast things. Fast cars, flashing fists, quick wit. He liked watching banks of clouds roll over the Barns like a stampede, liked instant storms and hard soaking rains and rivers that surged in their beds as restlessly as he tossed in his own. He liked birds that arrowed downward to their prey, cats that darted after mice, deer bounding through fields. He liked fast music. Fast food. Fast people.Richard Campbell Gansey III was an exception to the rule."Or, Gansey goes off to college and majors in eating/driving Ronan mad with lust.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sublime_jumbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sublime_jumbles/gifts).



> This is for sublime_jumbles, and for all you other weirdos who posted Raven Cycle fic to the Weight Gain tag and made me want to read the books and then I read the books and now I'm fucking obsessed and I'm a grown-ass lady with important things to do but I wake up in the morning thinking SQUASHONESQUASHTWO so THANKS A LOT. 
> 
> Anyway, this is, as always, a nasty beast of a fic you should read at your own risk. Surprise surprise, it's pages and pages of really excessive eating (don't try this at home, kids) with basically no plot. 
> 
> WARNING for mild situational and verbal humiliation related to weight gain. The character being humiliated (Gansey) really likes it, but feels conflicted about liking it, and it takes him a few chapters to admit to himself that he likes it, so please be cautious if that may trigger you. 
> 
> I will try to have the third and final chapter up not too long from now, if I can.

Ronan Lynch liked fast things. Fast cars, flashing fists, quick wit. He liked watching banks of clouds roll over the Barns like a stampede, liked instant storms and hard soaking rains and rivers that surged in their beds as restlessly as he tossed in his own. He liked birds that arrowed downward to their prey, cats that darted after mice, deer bounding through fields. He liked fast music. Fast food. Fast people.

Richard Campbell Gansey III was an exception to the rule. 

“C'mon man,” Ronan said, jinging his car keys impatiently. “Just pick a fucking flavor.”

“Now, hold on,” Gansey said amiably, and he rocked back on his heels, eyes still fastened on the ice cream menu. To the girl behind the counter, he said, “If I may, I'd try just one more. The graham cracker. Thank you kindly. Oh, this one's good. How about – do you mind –? Yes, the chocolate marshmallow. Thank you.”

If it was anyone else Ronan would have been long gone, would've already ordered his own standard scoop of chocolate, bolted it down, and taken off by now, but for Gansey, he waited. He was always waiting for Gansey. Always would.

“College is making you slower,” Ronan snapped. “You should get your money back.”

Ignoring him, Gansey said – finally! – “All right. I'll have a scoop of fudge brownie, a scoop of mint cookie, and a scoop of – I shouldn't try to pronounce it, but – straciatella? With whipped cream, please. And add a scoop of the graham cracker too, would you? Thank you. And my friend will have a chocolate cone.”

Gansey managed to make even ordering gelato sound like a presidential decree.

“Well, that looks excellent,” he said happily, accepting the enormous conconction he was handed, and the girl behind the counter beamed at him. Somehow, nobody ever minded waiting for Gansey. “Ronan, shall we?”

In answer, Ronan bit directly into his ice cream, and Gansey turned away with a wince, as Ronan knew he would. “It makes my teeth hurt, looking at you do that,” Gansey said.

“It makes my stomach hurt, looking at you eating all that,” Ronan said, and Gansey shrugged. 

“We skipped lunch,” he said. 

“No we didn't,” Ronan said incredulously. “We had burgers.”

“I suppose so,” Gansey said. “But it was barely noon. More like brunch. Let's eat outside.”

Chainsaw had been waiting for them outside, and uttered a glad cry when they settled themselves on top of a picnic table out front. Ronan held his arm out for the bird, and as her talons sank into his forearm, he allowed himself one second – one lightning-quick unbearable second – to look at Gansey, and simply want.

In the afternoon light Gansey's skin was lit up golden and his hazel eyes caught burnished green flecks of light. His shirt was unbuttoned to the collarbone and his shoulders were broad and strong beneath the fine green fabric, stretching the cotton just enough that Ronan could make out the wings of Gansey's shoulderblades as he hunched over his ice cream. This sight alone would have been enough to set his heart pounding, but there was something else – something that Ronan could scarcely think about directly without losing his mind. 

Gansey had put on weight. 

Not much, Ronan didn't think, but enough that he noticed. Which wasn't saying a lot, because he noticed everything about Gansey. But it'd been two months since Gansey had left for Harvard in mid-August, and this, Gansey's too-brief fall break, was the first time Ronan had seen him – and it was irrefutable that Gansey's shirt now pulled just a little tighter than usual around his shoulders, and his lovely jawline was ever-so-slightly softer, and his khaki shorts were wrapped snug around his ass. Ronan had clocked the change immediately, as he'd clocked everything else about Gansey's appearance: clean-shaven but hair a little longer, eyes bright but tired, handsome to the point of impossibility, and up perhaps ten pounds. 

Ronan had noticed this, died a tiny magnificent death by fire, and immediately shoved the thought to the darkest corner in the back of his mind. But now he brought it out again and let it sparkle in the light as Gansey wrapped his lips around his ice cream spoon and hummed with pleasure. Again, Ronan perished by flame. 

All of this – the looking, the assessing, the dying – took no more than an instant. One white-hot instant of indulging himself watching Gansey indulge, and Ronan shut it down, turned away, was ice again. 

“Let's go,” Ronan said, wiping his hands on his jeans and hopping down from the picnic table. Chainsaw flapped off his shoulder and began investigating some rocks. 

“What's the rush?” Gansey said, licking whipped cream from his lips. “I'm not even halfway finished with this.”

Ronan was well aware of that fact. He had not forgotten how slowly Gansey ate, how much care and attention he lavished on each bite, and even if he had forgotten he'd have been sharply reminded at lunch, when Gansey had taken nearly thirty minutes to finish his burger before eating each french fry one-by-one, and then picking off Ronan's remaining onion rings in the same fashion. Now he was sucking ice cream from his spoon with obvious, leisurely enjoyment, and Ronan made an aggrieved show of re-settling himself atop the table. Then, unable to withstand Gansey's slow assault on his senses, he got off again and started throwing rocks at the trashcan, satisfied with the small clangs they made when he connected. 

Watching Gansey eat had always made Ronan itch, like his skin was too small to contain him. It was something about Gansey's slow pace, how he ate like somebody who believed not only that there'd always be enough, but that there'd always be time to have enough, to eat his fill and maybe then some. A daring attitude, for a boy who'd already died twice in his nineteen years. It made Ronan want to hit something, to run a hundred miles, made him want to hold Gansey down and shove ice cream into his face til he was begging for mercy, and then maybe kiss that face, just a little, just for an hour or a year or forever or so. 

“Blue and Adam are coming home for the weekend, did I mention?” Gansey said. “Blue's bus gets in around noon, and Adam will leave Philadelphia sometime in the morning, so he'll be here in the evening. We're invited out to Fox Way for dinner.”

“Great,” Ronan said. “Bacon and yogurt. My favorite.” 

He did not say that he already knew this plan, because both Blue and Adam had texted him. Blue had ended up with a full scholarship to the University of Virginia, and Adam had chosen the University of Pennsylvania over Brown – for its law department, he insisted, though everyone knew it was because Pennsylvania was five hours from Blue, and Rhode Island was ten. Ronan would never admit aloud that he was glad neither of them had gone far, just as he wouldn't admit he was glad for how often they visited. 

He said, nonchalantly, “What's the food like at college, anyway?”

“Quite good, actually,” Gansey said, chasing a chunk of graham cracker. “You should visit, and you'll see.”

Ronan hurled a particularly large rock at the trashcan and smiled when it clanged so hard that Gansey jumped. 

“Maybe,” Ronan allowed.

:::

Despite Ronan's jibe, they were well-fed at Fox Way, a simple but filling meal of buttery pasta in cream and bacon, with Blue's requisite steamed broccoli on the side, and, in unspoken honor of Persephone, raspberry pie for dessert. Gansey cleared his plate not once, not twice, but three times, and ate two enormous slices of pie smothered in vanilla ice cream, and Ronan absolutely did not count. 

Gansey wasn't the only one who'd put on college weight – Adam had, too, though it had simply taken him from gaunt to slender, and Ronan experimented with watching Adam politely eat a decently-sized plateful of spaghetti and one piece of pie, but the sight did absolutely nothing for him. Why? He found Adam plenty attractive. Maybe it was because he knew Adam was simply eating enough for the first time in his life, while Gansey was clearly eating more than enough, and it was this more that Ronan couldn't get enough of. 

Or maybe it was just because it was Gansey. 

After dinner and one terrible Maura-strength drink each, he and Ronan headed back to Monmouth, which was essentially untouched since Gansey'd gone up to Boston, and they split a six-pack of beer while Ronan played a few games of pool by himself and Gansey sat on the couch and told him about college life. There was a lot to say. He and Ronan had spoken on the phone just once, briefly, and Gansey had done most of the talking: about his roommate, who was from Singapore and obsessed with the Great British Bakeoff, about his professors, one of whom had already asked him to T.A. a section of Intro to Mythology, and about his new friends, all of whom Ronan hated passionately on principal. Ronan had gotten off the phone missing Gansey so badly that he'd spent three hours in front of a punching bag, and his knuckles had ached for days. 

It was different, though, with Gansey here. Ronan found he didn't mind hearing about Gansey's new friends, not when he had Gansey to himself, and he couldn't help but ask questions, curious despite himself about Gansey's new life. Before he realized it, it was 3am and Gansey was saying, “Christ, it got late. But I'm not tired, are you?”

“No,” Ronan said, which was absolutely true. He was the opposite of tired, buzzing from Gansey's proximity. 

“Do you want to know one of the best things I've learned about in college?” Gansey said, taking out his phone. 

Ronan leaned on his pool cue. “How to be king of the nerds?”

“Late-night pizza,” Gansey said solemnly. “What's the name of that 24-hour place?”

“Gravelli's,” Ronan said, his heartbeat kicking up. “But it's shit.”

“Oh, pizza's pizza,” Gansey said, typing. He put his phone to his ear. “Pepperoni all right?”

“Fine by me,” said Ronan, though he wasn't hungry in the slightest and emphatically didn't plan to eat any. His fingers tingled as he listened to Gansey order a large pepperoni and a 2-liter of Coke, and when the pizza came he had to set himself a truly difficult challenge at the pool table so he had something to do other than watch Gansey slowly – so, so slowly – work his way through the entire box by himself. 

“Sure you don't want some?” Gansey said, mouth full of his fifth piece, and Ronan made the mistake of turning around in time to see Gansey take a long swig from the 2-liter, Adam's apple bobbing. He dabbed delicately at his greasy mouth with a cheap brown napkin and picked up another slice, holding it questioningly to Ronan.

“All you,” Ronan said. 

“Well, don't tempt me,” Gansey said. “Because I will finish this by myself if you don't help me out. Usually someone has at least a slice or two.”

“Usually?” Ronan said quickly, unable to stop himself. “You make a habit of this?”

Gansey peeled off a pepperoni and popped it into his mouth. “Only a few times a week.”

“That's a habit.”

“A delicious one,” Gansey agreed. “I've found it helps me sleep.”

“Pizza?”

“Any food, really,” Gansey said. “If I eat enough of it.”

Ronan's mouth went suddenly dry, and he took a long gulp of his last beer. “Watch out,” he managed. “I've heard rumors of something called the freshman fifteen.”

Gansey's cheeks went very pink at this, and the hand not holding pizza went to his belly and delivered a hesitant pat. “It's not a rumor,” Gansey said. “I can confirm its existence.”

“You've gained fifteen pounds?” Ronan said, and was proud that his voice stayed perfectly level. 

“Close to,” Gansey said. “You haven't noticed? Good. I'll tell you, Lynch, you try and keep your slim figure when it's all-you-can-eat, day in day out, and pizza just a phone call away. Though I suppose you've got different vices than I do.” He laughed suddenly, with real delight. “You'd probably be doing keg stands on frat row.”

“I would not,” Ronan said. Then, “What's a keg stand?”

“Oh, I have so much to teach you,” Gansey said. 

:::

Despite missing Gansey, Ronan wasn't what you'd call lonely. Most days, Opal and Chainsaw were more than enough company for him, and Matthew had gotten his license and so came down from DC fairly often, sometimes – rarely – with Declan. Neither was Ronan bored: there was plenty to keep him busy at the Barns, even aside from working on a new Cabeswater, which he could do in his sleep, haha. He wanted the Barnes to be a real, fully-functioning farm someday, which would take quite a lot of work, and so his days were spent digging and weeding and mowing and planting and hoeing and plowing and picking, all the while locked in a constant battle to fix the machines that were supposed to help him do all this, but instead seemed mostly to just take turns breaking down. He spent more time than he should on the phone with Adam, being talked through an engine repair. He managed to have a pick-it-yourself pumpkin patch in time for Halloween, and he did a decent business selling turkeys for Thanksgiving, and some of the more easily-repaired barns themselves were beginning to look almost usable. 

He hired a few people here-and-there when he needed help, and even got friendly with a few of them, friendly enough to go to the bar and throw darts with, anyway. And when Henry Cheng came through town in early November he surprised himself by having a very good time drinking pitchers of pink margaritas that Henry made with a blender he'd lugged all the way out to the Barns for that express purpose. They'd ended up on the roof with a couple of Ronan's dream-fireflies that trailed a lasting glow, playing Pictionary against the pitch night sky. 

And then it was decided that Ronan would host Thanksgiving. No one could agree on whose idea it had been first – the only person who knew was Ronan, because it had been Ronan's idea. He'd planted it slowly, watched it grow, and complained heartily when it was suggested, then spent a very good week looking up recipes, grocery shopping, butchering his fattest turkey, dreaming up elaborate floral arrangements, and vaccuuming the coarse goatlike hairs Opal left all over the couches. 

He wasn't lonely, no – but he was not displeased that for a weekend his often-empty home would be filled with the people he liked best. That was how the Barns was supposed to be, Ronan thought. Busy, cluttered, full of life. 

Matthew and Declan arrived a few nights before the holiday, time enough for Ronan and Declan to have a terrible fight and then make up, and everyone else came the morning of Thanksgiving. The Fox Way contingent was first, and immediately seemed to be everywhere at once, both completely in the way and somehow indispensable. Mr. Grey and Blue began chopping heaps of green things for a salad, while Maura, several sticks of butter in hand, took over the mashed potatoes, and Calla immediately began making everybody drinks although it was only noon – strong ones with whiskey and something bitter and something sweet, and Ronan had two of them in quick succession and felt extremely warm. 

When Adam arrived with Gansey, Ronan didn't hear them come in. He was too busy stirring gravy and listening to Calla and Declan debate the age of an antique armoire in the hallway, with Opal sitting on the kitchen floor at his feet and eating what looked like an ancient bootlace, and Matthew loudly trying to convince her not to. 

Then there was a hand on his shoulder, and Gansey said, “Why, Ronan, is that an apron?”

Ronan's heart leapt and he whirled around, scowling, an expression he could not maintain when he saw Gansey's beaming face. “It's your mother's apron,” Ronan said, unable to come up with a better retort. 

“I don't believe my mother has ever cooked a meal in her life,” said Gansey. “You, however, seem an old hand. That smells divine.”

“Coca-Cola tells me you're studying the Mabinogion,” Calla said, stomping in and planting herself in front of Gansey. “Give me a line in the original Middle Welsh and I'll give you a drink.”

Gansey obliged, and Calla set about making him a drink. For his part, Ronan was grateful for the chance to turn back to the gravy and get himself under control, because Gansey was wearing his senior-year Aglionby sweater, which had fit him perfectly a year ago, and god have mercy did not fit him perfectly anymore. 

If Gansey hadn't quite reached the freshman fifteen over October break, it was clear that by now he'd not only surpassed it but was probably edging into the freshman twenties.  
The sweater was stretched tightly over his broad shoulders, and beneath the navy wool Ronan could see an unmistakeable swell of belly, a gentle outward curve that was beginning to pull the fabric taut. It was obvious, too, that Gansey's khakis were a size too small, and had been tugged down to accomodate the new pudge of his stomach, though nothing could be done about how tight they'd gotten across his seat. 

He looked fucking incredible. 

“There's cheese in the fridge, and crackers in that cabinet,” Ronan said to him. “Make yourself useful and throw something together for people to snack on. Maybe while you're butchering the cheddar you can tell me how your Latin test went.”

“I won't learn my grade until after the break,” Gansey said, thunking down a cutting board and casting about for a knife, “but thanks to that book you sent me, I think the translation essay at least wasn't bad. Is there something spicy in this cheese? It's very good. Adam, try this.”

Adam, who was passing by with what looked like yet another pie – the fourth, by Ronan's count – paused to accept a cracker and cheese from Gansey. Adam still looked healthier than Ronan had ever seen him, but unlike Gansey he didn't appear to have put on any more weight, and Ronan found something delightful in that – in the evidence that Gansey was over-indulging past the point of most first-time college students. He smirked to himself as Gansey offered Adam another slice of cheese, which was declined and ended up in Gansey's own mouth.

“Try the brie,” Ronan said, and Gansey did.

By the time dinner was on the table, all the cheese and all the crackers were gone, and Ronan had it on good authority that much of it had ended up in Gansey's stomach, along with half a jar of olives and a bag of barbeque potato chips that had appeared out of nowhere and everyone denied having brought. 

The table looked beautiful, softly-lit and overflowing with excellent food and Ronan's dream-flowers, and when everyone had been seated and Ronan stood to carve the turkey, a swell of utter contentment rose up in him. It was tempered, as everything always was, by grief, but for once the thought of his parents did not dim his happiness, but strangely made it shine brighter. Almost as if his sadness was an offset for joy. 

“Ronan,” Declan said. “You should say a few words. Give us a grace.”

Ronan looked out at the expectant faces of his friends and family, and caught Gansey's eye. Gansey was gazing up at him, lips curved in an odd, almost wistful smile, and Ronan's heart caught for a moment. 

“Go on,” Declan said, and Ronan nodded. He cleared his throat. 

“Squash one,” he said solemnly, “squash two,” and was pelted with rolls.

:::

Dinner was delicious. 

Ronan had seated himself between Gansey and Opal, the latter so he could stop her from gnawing on candles, and the former for the sake of pure voyeurism. His awareness of Gansey at his elbow was so distracting he kept forgetting to eat in favor of watching Gansey scoop himself another enormous serving of mashed potatoes, or slather more butter across his bread, or add another pile of turkey to the pool of gravy on his plate. Gansey ate slowly, as usual, but what he lacked in speed he made up for in steadiness. While other people put their utensils down to tell a story or get another drink or just take a breather, Gansey did not stop eating, not once. His fork was always in motion, plate to plate, plate to mouth, and the moment a space was cleared on his overloaded plate, he replaced it with more food. 

By the time everybody else had slowed to a near stop, their plates empty, their glasses filled, Gansey was still going strong with a newly-full plate of food. He paused to shuck his Aglionby sweater, revealing a vivid turquoise polo shirt that Ronan knew well – but god, he'd never known it like this. 

“Hot in here,” Gansey commented, face pink, and tugged the polo down self-consciously. The sweater was snug – but the shirt was downright tight. It showed off the thick muscles of Gansey's shoulders and arms, and clung to a chest that didn't seem nearly as firm as it once had – but the best part was how tightly it pulled across the bloated curve of his belly, outlining every single new pound Gansey had gained in the past three and a half months. 

Ronan tore his eyes away only to find Blue staring right at him. She raised one eyebrow near-imperceptibly, and for a moment they stayed like that, eyes locked, until they both broke contact at the same time and Blue flicked her gaze to Gansey instead, then back to Ronan, her expression mischevious. 

“Here, Gansey,” she said. “I think the stuffing missed you on its last round.”

“I think it might've,” Gansey said, leaning forward to reach for the bowl of stuffing, and Ronan licked his lips as the motion squished his newly squishy-looking stomach. Squash one, Ronan's brain gibbered insensibly, squash two, squash Gansey. He looked back at Blue, who widened her eyes at him as Gansey turned back to his plate, and then, the little shit, she puffed out her cheeks ever-so-slightly and mouthed, 'He's getting chubby!'

Ronan tried to glare at her, though her silent words had sent his blood racing, and when she cackled out loud as if she knew what he was thinking, he couldn't help but crack a grudging smile in return. Adam glanced at them, curious, and in answer Blue knocked her arm affectionately into his and then delivered a quick kiss to his shoulder. But Adam wasn't to be distracted.

“What are you two smiling about?” he asked, looking from her to Ronan. “I believe that was a laugh one might call maniacal.”

“Nothing,” Blue and Ronan said at the same time, and Adam looked well and truly alarmed. 

“Oh no,” he said. 

“Gansey,” Blue said loudly, “would you like another biscuit?”

“I would, thank you,” Gansey said, and then accepted the butter dish, of which he availed himself quite liberally. “I must say I'm getting very full,” he commented, plowing through an enormous forkful of potatoes. “But everything is just so wonderful. Ronan, where'd you learn to cook like this?”

“My mother,” Ronan said, and didn't look at Blue. He could practically hear her feminist rant about a man dreaming up a wife to cook for him, but she surprised him by saying, “She must've been very good. This is the best turkey I've ever had.”

“They're better raw,” Opal put in.

“Doubt it,” Adam said, and Opal cocked her head at him. 

“But their bones get so crunchy when you cook them,” she said. 

Gansey let out a slightly horrified laugh. “Ronan,” he said, “maybe next time, dream a vegetarian.”

“Opal's fine the way she is,” Ronan said, and, Opal kicked him in the shin with her sharp little hoof, clearly pleased. 

Down the table, either Declan or Mr. Grey had produced a deck of cards, and Maura, Calla and Matthew were taking turns guessing which one would be on top. Matthew either did not remember or did not care that he was in the presence of real psychics, because he kept cheerily getting every card wrong, and then exclaiming, “Wow!” when Calla and Maura got it right. 

Gansey was the only one still eating, and he suddenly seemed to realize it, because he glanced around and quickly pushed the last bite of biscuit into his mouth, making an effort to speed up and clean his plate. 

“God,” he said, putting a careful hand to his stomach and then dropping it. “I really am full.”

“You don't have to finish that,” Blue said. There was still quite a lot on his plate.

“Shame to let it go to waste,” Gansey said around a mouthful of turkey. How he managed to talk with his mouth full and still seem a picture of dignity, Ronan wasn't certain. 

“You have to save room for dessert, though,” Blue said. 

“I have a whole guest-room dedicated to dessert,” Gansey promised, and put his hand back onto his stomach, very gingerly, giving it an almost fond pat-pat. Ronan took a long, calming breath through his nose. 

“I made a pecan pie,” Adam said, voice morose, “but it flooded itself in the oven. It looks more like pecan soup.”

“I'm sure it'll be great,” Gansey said – and, about a half hour later, when he'd finally finished his dinner and everyone had retired to the living room for pie and coffee, he made a point of serving himself an absolutely absurd amount of Adam's contribution, which in all fairness did have to be eaten from a bowl rather than a plate. 

“Adam, it was perfect,” he said muzzily, scraping his spoon around the near-empty bowl. He was slouched down in an armchair looking sleepy and sated and not a little bloated, his new little swell of belly pushed out round and firm beneath his tight shirt. He kept tugging at the waistband of his khakis, pulling them down, then trying to hitch them up. 

“Are you staying here tonight, or coming back to Henrietta?” Adam asked. 

“I think I'll stay here,” Gansey said. “I'm too full for a long car ride. You don't mind, do you, Ronan?”

“The couch folds out,” Ronan said shortly, thrilled.

“Did you try Calla's peach pie?” Blue said, and passed Gansey a slice. 

“I don't think I can,” Gansey said, eyeing it dubiously. “It does look delicious, though. Oh, it is delicious. Calla, is there cinnamon in here?”

“Nutmeg,” Calla said. “I learned it from Persephone.”

Ronan noted how Persephone's name registered on the room: nobody stopped talking, or put their drink down, but there was a subtle shift of energy, like a window had been briefly opened onto the memory of Persephone, and her presence had wafted in like fresh air. It was the kind of grief he aspired to, one day, instead of the dark boundless angry well of his own. He was getting there, he thought. Slowly. 

“And what's this?” Gansey said, letting Blue put another slice on his plate. “Chocolate?”

“French silk,” Maura said. She was wearing much the same expression Blue had earlier – amused, mischevious. “But you're not going to skip Mr. Grey's rhubarb, are you?”

“Gōd metesōcn,” Mr. Grey said. 

“Showoff,” said Calla, and leaned over to add kahlua to his coffee, just as Blue leaned to add the third slice of pie to Gansey's overloaded plate. 

“Well now,” Gansey protested, but his fork was already hovering delightedly over the pies, unable to choose which to try first. In the end he went with a forkful of the french silk, then moved quickly to the rhubarb, and then back to the peach, in a slow circle while everyone else laughed and talked and drank coffee, until all three slices were gone and his plate sat empty on his knee while his fingers linked over his full belly. He was breathing heavily, chest rising and falling in a labored rhythm, and his face was very pink. 

Adam said, “Gansey, have you been defeated?”

“I have,” Gansey said. “I'm --” he paused to suck in a shallow breath “-- I'm extremely full. Uncomfortably full. God.”

“Nothing sleep won't fix,” Blue said. She was tucked into Adam's side, blinking drowsily, and Ronan had a sudden jealous longing to be able to touch Gansey like that, to wrap an arm around him and hold him close. “I could use some sleep, myself,” she added. 

Everybody soon began to make their slow progress out the door, gathering coats, accepting tupperware containers of leftovers, and arranging who would come pick up the Fox Way car the next morning, because they'd all drank too much to drive and all five were squeezing into a very sober Adam's hondoyota. It was agreed that Blue and Adam would come to fetch the car and have a leftovers lunch at the Barns, and take Gansey with them back to Henrietta – and Ronan, if he decided to come. 

Matthew had drifted upstairs to let Chainsaw out of her cage and into the night for a flap-around, and Declan was grimly washing dishes with a martyr's intensity. 

“Leave it for the morning,” Ronan had told him. “We'll do it then.”

“You'll get mice.”

“I'll dream a killer cat.”

“Everything will crust over.”

There was no arguing with him, even though Ronan knew that the next morning Declan would very loudly talk about having done all the dishes all by himself with no help from anyone.

Fine. Ronan wasn't going to wash any fucking dishes. He was going to stay in the living room and watch Gansey putter around getting ready for bed, moving even slower than usual, wincing every time he had to bend around his full stomach. Ronan's patience was rewarded, however, when Gansey disappeared into the bathroom and emerged in a pair of flannel pajama pants and an extremely soft-looking old t-shirt that draped beautifully over the push of his stomach and the subtle swell of what might one day be love handles, if Gansey didn't get a handle on his appetite.

“Should we call for pizza?” Ronan said, pretending to dial, and Gansey half-laughed, half-groaned. 

“I'm never eating again,” Gansey said, collapsing onto the bed Ronan had folded out for him. 

“Doubt it,” Ronan said. 

“You want to hear the awful truth?” Gansey said, turning sleepy eyes on him. “I'm already thinking about which pie I'll have for breakfast. Jesus, no wonder I'm – ” but he stopped, and suddenly seemed very interested in an embroidered cushion. 

“What?” Ronan said, too eagerly. 

“No wonder I'm so tired,” Gansey finished, and gave an enormous yawn to punctuate. When Ronan left him for the evening, he was swaddled in blankets and carefully sipping water, one hand tucked beneath the covers where Ronan was blazingly certain it lay soothingly across his packed stomach.

With every fibre of his being, Ronan wished it was his goddamn hand on Gansey. He wished it so hard he couldn't fall asleep until dawn. 

:::

For the next few days, Ronan couldn't help cataloguing every slow bite Gansey put in his mouth, and every night he ran a glorious tally. In that first day alone, Gansey ate what Ronan might eat in an entire weekend. Half a pie for breakfast, a full plate of leftovers as a mid-morning snack, two more plates for lunch, a few cans of soda to settle his stomach, a Snickers bar found half-crushed in his jacket pocket and eaten mindlessly on the drive to Henrietta, an enormous amount of takeout Chinese food, and, in the wee hours of the morning, almost an entire pepperoni pizza. 

Ronan couldn't tell if Gansey himself realized how much he was eating. Sometimes he seemed to do it absentmindedly – if there was food nearby, Gansey would eat it until it was gone. Other times, he seemed conscious of the excess. At a diner for lunch on the third day, Ronan watched him vaccilate between a chicken fried steak and chicken and dumplings, and when the waitress came to take their order, he slammed the menu shut with the air of a man who'd finally come to a difficult decision, and ordered them both. 

“Boston doesn't understand Southern food,” Gansey explained, when Blue raised her eyebrows at him. “I have to get it when I can. I'll box some up for later, I'm sure.”

But he didn't. He ate his entire fried steak with cream gravy and mashed potatoes, and his entire bowl of chicken and dumplings, plus two dinner rolls and several glasses of Coke and a slice of banana cream pie that he ordered sotto voce, as if his friends wouldn't notice. 

“Aren't you full?” Blue said, voice full of wonder, when the waitress set the pie down in front of him.

“Very,” Gansey said, and he looked it, cheeks flushed, breathing through his mouth as he applied himself to his dessert. “But when you've died twice, you learn not to turn down pie of this caliber.”

And of course there was nothing anyone could say to that. But Ronan heard Blue whisper in Adam's good ear, “That was almost forty dollars worth of food!”, and his heart stuttered. Of course it hadn't occurred to him, how much money Gansey must be spending on food, on all the pizzas and snacks that weren't included in his meal plan, and he pictured Gansey's severely slender, elegant mother wrinkling her brow at the bank statement, at the hundreds and hundreds of dollars that were going directly into her son's stomach. The thought made him want to buy Gansey the most expensive meal available and watch him eat every bite, money vanishing down his throat. Thank fuck Blue wasn't a psychic – if she could see into his head, she'd puke from the sheer waste of it. But god, that was what was so delicious about it. 

The morning Gansey left, Ronan drove him to the airport, and he paused a moment in the front seat before gathering his bags. 

“Will you do me a favor, and consider something?” Gansey said. 

“Maybe,” Ronan said warily.

“Well, I'm spending Christmas in DC with my parents, and I've agreed to stay at Harvard over winter break to help one of my professors with a project, so I won't make it back to Henrietta until the end of March, at least.”

Ronan fought a plummetting feeling of pure dismay, and forced a shrug. “Okay.”

“Would you think about coming to visit?” Gansey said. “At Harvard, I mean. My roommate will be gone so you'd have a decent place to sleep, and I know you're not a fan of cities, but Boston and Cambridge are really quite nice. And Maura mentioned to me that she and Opal got along well so I'm sure she wouldn't mind watching out for her – maybe she could even stay at Fox Way, she'd like that, I bet, a change of scenery.”

To his real astonishment, Ronan realized that Gansey was nervous. No, Ronan did not like to travel. No, he did not like new places, or really any place that wasn't the Barns or Monmouth or Fox Way. No, he had absolutely no desire to ever sleep in a dorm room, or even step foot on a school campus ever again. But didn't Gansey know that Ronan would always, always make an exception for him?

“Can Chainsaw come?” Ronan said. 

A smile spread over Gansey's face, and he said, “I don't see why not. She's very well-behaved.”

This was not strictly true, but Ronan let it pass. “All right,” he said. “I'll come.”

“If you come on New Years, I can take you to a real Harvard party,” Gansey said, and then hastily, seeing the expression on Ronan's face, “or come after.”

“Fine,” Ronan said. “Now get out of my car. You'll miss your plane.”

Gansey gave him a quick, blinding smile, clapped him once on the shoulder, and was gone.

:::

In the intervening month and a half, Ronan thought about Gansey near-constantly. This wasn't new, of course, but the images he conjured certainly were. He found himself wondering, at any given moment, whether Gansey was eating, and if so, what. It killed him that he had no way to find out, and he spent a fruitless week trying to dream up an item that would tell him what Gansey had consumed each day, but the closest he got was a little clock-like object that uttered a weak screech three times a day, in the morning, the noon, and the evening. Ronan went online and figured out that the thing alerted him whenever Harvard's dining halls opened for a meal, which wasn't very helpful at all. 

So he took matters into his own hands. 

A week or so after Thanksgiving, he went online and ordered $300 worth of gift baskets from Williams-Sonoma, which was only two gift baskets because that place was a goddamn racket. He ordered Gansey “Three Months of European Cheeses,” and “Three Months of American Cheeses,” and added a set of 30 chocolate croissants for an outrageous $80. To round it up to an even $500, and because it was fucking hilarious, he added a $130 pre-cooked whole smoked ham. 

He had it gift-wrapped and sent anonymously, and on the tag he wrote simply, “Thank you for your service to Aglionby.”

Then he waited. 

The day it was delivered, Gansey sent a group text to Ronan, Adam and Blue. It was a picture of an absolute smorgasbord of food and floofy wrapping paper spread out over a neatly-made twin bed, clearly in a dorm room. It was accompanied with a wide-eyed emoji. Then another text came through: the picture of the gift tag. 

“I'm pretty sure this is from Headmaster Child,” Gansey texted. “I just edited his son's application essay to Harvard and agreed to introduce him around when he comes to visit in the spring.”

“Jesus christ,” Adam texted back.

“You should have a fancy wine and cheese party,” Blue texted.

Ronan texted a picture of Chainsaw eating a Cheez-it. 

A week later, Gansey texted a picture of a very large, very empty box.

“I didn't read the label,” he texted. “Apparently this cheese was supposed to last three months. I wish you all could come help me with this next box. I'm going to turn into an aged camembert if I'm not careful.”

“Did it come with crackers, at least?” Adam texted. 

“No,” Gansey texted back with a laughing emoji. “I've gone through a bakery's worth of baguettes.”

This was too much for Ronan to handle, and he threw his phone across the room. It landed harmlessly on the couch. Opal looked up from where she lay in front of the fireplace on her stomach, watching the logs smolder with the fascination of someone watching a movie, and Ronan said, “Opal, fetch.” 

She did, and then plopped herself at his feet and petted his jeans while he re-read that perfect text. Gansey had eaten three months of cheese in seven days. $150 decadent dollars worth of fine, fattening cheese, and he'd bolted it down probably without thinking. It was almost more than Ronan could bear to imagine. 

“Is it your magician, buzzing you?” Opal asked. 

“Yeah,” Ronan said. “Partially.”

“And your king?”

He looked down at her, surprised. “Gansey, you mean?”

“Gansey,” she agreed. “Tell them I said hello. Tell them to come see all that snow you plowed off the driveway! I'll make a cave.”

Ronan touched a hand to her hair, very quickly. “They're busy,” he said. “But I'd like to see you make a cave.”

“Tomorrow,” she said decisively. 

“Hey,” he said. “What would you think if... if I went away, not for long, but for a little bit, and you hung out with Maura and Calla for a while?”

“I'd like it,” Opal said, no hesitation.

“Yeah? You wouldn't miss me?”

She looked at him like he was the stupidest thing on earth. “Not if you came back.”

“Of course I'd come back. It would only be for a few weeks, to see Gansey at college.”

“Well, you'd have to stay safe,” Opal said. “If I'm not there to protect you. You should take Chainsaw.”

“You just want to get rid of Chainsaw for a while,” Ronan said, and Opal threw herself dramatically away from him, which proved his point. “I'm going in January,” he said, and decided on the spot, “January 2nd. You want to put it on the calendar?”

Opal had a strange interest in the calendar, and loved marking things off on it. She jumped to her hooves and trotted into the kitchen, and Ronan called after her, “In English!”

When he looked later, under January 2nd Opal had written, “Ronan sees his king.”

:::

The drive to Boston should've taken eleven hours, but Ronan made it in nine. He left early enough in the morning that it wasn't even 5pm by the time he'd followed Gansey's directions and parked the BMW in a snowy Harvard lot, slinging his duffle bag over his shoulder and adjusting his awkward hold on Chainsaw's cage, which was poorly disguised beneath a giant black coat. It wasn't hard to find Gansey's dorm, a big brick ivy-covered building that looked like a fucking Harvard postcard, and as Ronan made his way towards the front door, he saw a figure inside, waiting. A second later, Gansey had flung open the door and was beaming at him so brightly Ronan felt a little faint with it. 

“You're here!” Gansey said. “I can scarcely believe it. Come in quick, it's cold. How was your drive?”

Ronan answered, somehow, though he wasn't quite certain what he said. At the sight of Gansey his brain had started fritzing like a microwave in an electrical storm, and dumbly he allowed Gansey to take his duffle bag and begin leading him through a hideous carpeted hallway and towards an elevator. “I'm on the sixth floor,” Gansey explained, “a bit of a hike with a big bag like this, though normally I take the stairs. Is that Chainsaw under there?”

“She's sleeping,” Ronan managed. He still hadn't managed to un-fuzz his brain. Gansey was more dressed down than Ronan had ever seen him, in an old Aglionby crew t-shirt with his wireframes perched on his nose, his hair just a shade below perfectly coiffed, and the real shock was that he was wearing fucking sweatpants. 

Ronan had never seen Gansey in sweatpants in daylight hours, and the only reason he could be seeing it now was because Gansey had absolutely, unequivocally put on more weight, and there was no way in hell the pants he'd worn to Thanksgiving would fit him now. His t-shirt was so snug it was starting to wrinkle around his chest, which looked broad and soft, and his shoulders and arms looked bulky with new fat, but the real evidence was in his belly. 

Over Thanksgiving it had been a suggestion of a belly, an introduction, a slight convexing of a formerly-flat torso – but it was unmistakeable now. It bowed out beneath his t-shirt, soft and round and insistent, the sweet indent of his belly button clearly visible beneath the thin fabric, and the shirt had ridden up just enough for Ronan to see the waistband of Gansey's sweats cutting into the new meat of his hips. He looked tousled and decadent and Ronan was lightheaded with it.

Ronan took this all in in a heartbeat, but Gansey must've seen him notice, because he adjusted the duffle bag so it was in front of his pudgy torso, and when Ronan looked at his face he gave him a bright but somehow false smile. 

“The room's a bit of a mess,” Gansey said. “I wanted to have it clean it for you, but I prioritized getting some extra work done so I could take a few days off for your visit. How long are you staying?”

Ronan shrugged. “I'll leave when I get bored. You know I don't give a shit about your room.”

The elevator dinged, and Gansey led the way out, giving Ronan a chance to appreciate the widening scope of Gansey's backside, which was testing the limits of the seat of his sweatpants. Gansey's room was at the end of the hall, and he hadn't been kidding – it really was a bit of a mess. Ronan's eager eyes counted three empty pizza boxes, several crumpled bags of chips, a bin full of Coke cans, and, glory be to heaven, an enormous and empty tub of vanilla ice cream right next to Gansey's bed. 

“Did you save some of that fancy cheese for me?” Ronan couldn't help asking, and Gansey turned faintly pink.

“No, I did not,” he said. “Are you hungry? I have snacks, and beer.”

“I'd take a beer,” Ronan said, and Gansey fetched a couple bottles from a humming mini-fridge while Ronan let Chainsaw out of her cage to explore. When he turned around Gansey was getting comfortable on the bed, two opened beer bottles caught in the fingers of one hand and what looked like a box of store-bought cupcakes in the other. Seated, his belly rounded out very obviously in front of him, and Ronan wondered exactly how much weight he'd managed to add since Thanksgiving. Six months worth of cheese had clearly done him good. 

“It's so surreal to see you here, in this room,” Gansey said, handing Ronan a beer as he sat at the foot of Gansey's bed. Chainsaw flapped over, pecked at the bottle, and flapped away. “Surreal, but somehow normal, too. Want a cupcake?”

Ronan took one mechanically, watching Gansey unwrap his own and take a big bite. “I couldn't picture you in a dorm room,” Ronan admitted. “But this – this feels like you really live here.”

It did, too, now that he was looking around properly. There were old maps tacked to the walls, stacks of books, sheafs of photocopied newspapers piled on the desk. On Gansey's side of the room, at least. The other side was neat as a pin, with a big poster of a cake above the head of the bed. 

“As I've told you, Anton's a big fan of baking shows,” Gansey said, following his gaze to the poster. He gestured to his half-eaten cupcake. “He's something of an amateur baker, and he hates when I eat this kind of grocery-store pastry. But he's not here to bake for me, and anyway I like these just as well as the fancy ones.”

“They're good,” Ronan said, though in truth he couldn't remember tasting it, although there was a bite gone. What would Gansey think if he could see inside Ronan's head? If he knew that Ronan was imagining smashing this cupcake into Gansey's mouth?

“How was your Christmas?” Gansey said. “Blue told me you went to DC to see Declan.”

“It was shit,” Ronan said, though actually it hadn't been. He told Gansey about Declan's newest girlfriend, and the stupid ostentatious apartment he and Matthew lived in, and Declan's insufferable college friends, and Matthew's sweet high school friends, and the Christmas dinner he and Matthew had made together. 

Gansey listened attentively, finishing his cupcake and reaching casually for another one, licking crumbs off his thumb and then frosting from his upper lip, nodded in commiseration as Ronan bitched about Declan's insistence that Opal stay hidden away any time his girlfriend was anywhere near the apartment, neatly demolishing his second cupcake and helping himself to a third, peeling the wrapper with such a practiced movement that Ronan lost his train of thought. 

“What about you?” he asked. “How was the annual Gansey family political fuckface soiree?”

“Both completely fine and completely intolerable, as always,” Gansey said, and took an extra-large bite of his cupcake, filling his mouth so he couldn't speak. Ronan squinted at him suspiciously and waited for him to swallow. There was a brief silence, which Gansey filled with another large bite, and then he said, “I did have an uncomfortable fight with my mother.”

“She want you to drop out of college and be her campaign manager?” Ronan said. 

“No,” Gansey said, and suddenly his cheeks were very pink, and he was staring determinedly at the last bite of cupcake in his hand. He examined it carefully, then put it in his mouth. “I've just had three cupcakes,” he said conversationally, when he'd swallowed.

“Yeah,” Ronan said, baffled but intrigued. 

“I'm going to have a fourth,” Gansey said, and picked up the last cupcake in the box. “I bought these this morning. There were eight.”

“Okay,” Ronan said, though all of a sudden he thought he knew where this was going, and his body tensed. 

“I know that's quite a lot of sugar,” Gansey said, and dropped the wrapper. “Quite a lot of anything, I suppose.”

Ronan wanted to reassure him, to tell him that they were small cupcakes, but he never lied. 

“Maybe you've noticed,” Gansey started, then corrected himself. “I know you've noticed that I've put on some weight.”

Ronan took a moment to modulate his voice before saying, “I guess.”

“Thirty-eight pounds, as of Christmas, and probably more by now,” Gansey said. “Which is, well, it's not insignificant, or at least my mother doesn't seem to think so.” He let out a very false laugh, and took a bite of his cupcake. “I'm supposed to be on a diet,” he said. “She had her nutritionist draw me up a plan and everything, and I've got a check-in here in Cambridge at the end of the month. By this hour of the day, for example, I was supposed to have eaten a bowl of oatmeal and a turkey sandwich.”

“Did you?” Ronan croaked.

“Yes,” Gansey said. “I also had a grilled cheese and a steak burrito from the dining hall. Also a stack of pancakes after the oatmeal, with bacon and a few scrambled eggs. Not to mention...” He took a deep breath. “Not to mention seven goddamn cupcakes.”

“And a beer,” Ronan added. Gansey looked at him, and cracked a small but genuine smile.

“Right,” he said. “And a beer.”

Ronan licked his lips. He didn't know what the hell Gansey wanted him to say, but clearly he was supposed to say something. Gansey was watching him anxiously, cupcake in one hand, beer in the other, the bloat of his belly like a beacon between the two. 

“What are we having for dinner?” Ronan said. 

Gansey didn't react for a moment, and then he let out a guffaw of laughter. To Ronan's ears, it sounded almost relieved. 

“There's a very stupid grill nearby,” Gansey said. “You pick your ingredients and watch them cook it, with lots of pizzazz. There are the kind of alcoholic drinks that come in exceedingly large bowls with a funny straw. You'll hate it.”

“Fucking try me,” Ronan said. 

Gansey was right, he did hate it – on principal. But Gansey had omitted the fact that it was all-you-can eat, an endless bowl you could fill and re-fill as many times as you wanted and the knife-spinning chefs had to grill whatever you put in front of them. Ronan found this hysterical, and convinced Gansey to try all sorts of weird combinations, following him down the buffet line and giving directions: “Okay, lobster tail, steak, fettucine noodles, soy sauce, and cheddar cheese.” The next round: “Ground beef, spare ribs, bok choy, barbeque sauce, and rice.” Then, “Pulled pork, corn, red sauce, penne noodles, feta cheese.”

After his fourth plate, slouching with his elbows on the tabletop as he blearily watched the chefs chop and sizzle, he said, “I'm too full to get another one.”

Ronan sagged, disappointed, until Gansey said, “You'll have to get it for me,” and pushed his bowl towards Ronan. Ronan froze, a slow combustion starting in his belly and moving downwards. Frantically he thought of the least sexy image he could, Headmaster Childs shitting naked on the john, and managed to stave off a very embarrassing situation.

“Fine,” he said, standing with Gansey's bowl. “But only if you order me another beer while I'm gone.”

He filled Gansey's bowl with as much food as it could possibly handle, a heap of spaghetti that stood several inches over the top rim, and he filled it with things he knew Gansey would enjoy. Italian sausage, pepperoni, bacon, angel hair pasta, sun-dried tomatoes, alfredo sauce, parmesan, cheddar, and basil. 

“That looks good,” Gansey said, and watched the chef dump the contents onto the grill and begin whacking it with the stupid showy spatula. He was leaned back in his chair, and it was clear that he was already very full. His packed belly stuck out in front of him, sweatpants pulled low beneath the tight bulge of it, and he kept touching the side and stifling tiny, adorable burps behind his fist. But as soon as the chef put the enormous plate of food in front of him, he sat forward with a groan and dug his fork in.

“I just can't see why I shouldn't eat it, if I want it,” Gansey said between bites. “I know I ought to follow my mother's plan, and I swear every morning I fully intend to – but then I see waffles, and want them, and it doesn't seem sensible to deny myself. Except, and I can't believe I'm admitting this to you, I'm just not fitting into any of my clothes anymore. It's a hassle; a hassle I could avoid if I'd stop eating so much.”

“Or if you bought new clothes,” Ronan said. 

Gansey chewed a slow, thoughtful mouthful. “I know,” he said. “It seems that might be the easiest solution. I keep hoping I'll drop a few pounds so I can get my pants properly buttoned, at least, but it's looking unlikely.”

“Fuck diets,” Ronan said. “It's not as if you're on crew anymore.”

“That's another consideration,” Gansey said. “My lack of exercise. Harvard has a top-notch gym and I've only been in once.”

“Gansey,” Ronan said. “Are you fucking happy?”

Gansey licked some alfredo sauce from his lips. “Well,” he said. “I mean, I miss you and the others and Henrietta and our ley line, but after everything that's happened, it's been... Oh, I don't know. It's been nice to be normal, for a while. To not be obsessing over Glendower, and just... be. Yes. Yes, I am happy.”

“So tell your mother to piss up a rope,” Ronan said.

“I don't think I'd put it quite like that,” Gansey said, smiling. “I think it's best if I --” he paused, burped very delicately behind his hand, winced, and said, “Excuse me. I think it's best if I pretend I'm following her rules, to avoid the argument. At least for now.”

“But you're not going to really follow them, are you?”

“Ronan,” Gansey said. “Do I look like I'm following them?”

“No,” Ronan said.

“Well,” Gansey shrugged, “there you have it.”

And, slowly, he went back to his meal.


	2. Chapter 2

At Christmas, Gansey's mother had asked him over and over, “But darling, how even did you put on so much weight in such a short time?” as if it was a mystery of biology, a magical feat. It was not. Gansey had gained nearly forty pounds through very ordinary means: eating. 

He hadn't arrived at Harvard planning to stuff himself insensible at every meal, obviously, but it had begun happening nearly right away. The dining halls were social places, and Gansey was a social creature, and in order to maximize his social time he had to maximize his dining time. He spent hours a day in the dining halls, lingering over meals and going back for seconds and thirds and fourths, and sometimes if he was invited by an upper-classman he'd go to more than one dining hall in a single meal, swinging by his own for his favorite steak burrito and then heading to an upper-class hall for a few plates of spaghetti bolognese. 

That was what he told himself, anyway: that he was eating so much out of social obligation. And it wasn't a lie, but neither was it the whole truth. The truth was, it had been a long while since he'd lived as a normal person – and an even longer while since he'd lived in a place where nobody knew his parents, and if they had known, they mostly wouldn't have cared. Nobody expected him to be Richard Campbell Gansey III, because nobody cared that there had been a Richard Campbell Gansey I and II; his Southern lineage, practically royalty in Virginia, meant absolutely nothing on a college campus in Massachusetts. Sure, there were students around to whom it may have carried weight, but Gansey purposefully steered clear of those circles. He was, in a way, freer than he'd ever been. Nobody was watching him. For once, he had no appearances to keep up.

And apparently, when the eye of the world was turned away from him, he was at heart something of a glutton.

He'd always liked eating, but he'd never had the chance to find out just how much, and the answer was: he liked it a lot. Neither had he ever had the opportunity to find out just how good he was at it, and the answer was: very good indeed. He astonished himself with his own capacity, and on a lark would sometimes set himself small challenges, like seeing how many peanut butter cookies he could eat in a sitting without feeling too ill (answer: twenty one), or how many grilled cheeses he could manage during one three-hour lunch (answer: nine and a half). He came to first enjoy, and then actively seek out the feeling of being so full it verged on painful, how his belly would feel stretched from the inside and the rest of his body kind of melted around it, limbs going weak, fingers getting cold as all his energy rushed towards digestion, discomfort burning into a state of pure arousal. 

In those moments, so stuffed with food he felt nearly drugged, knowing he was doing something “wrong” but not caring because it felt so goddamn wonderful, he thought he knew how Ronan felt when he pressed his foot to the gas pedal and shot out into the night. 

And for once, he'd found a surefire cure for his insomnia. Pizza. At the beginning of the semester he'd order a small before he went to sleep, but by the time winter break rolled around, he'd graduated to larges. 

It wasn't that he hadn't noticed he was gaining weight. He did notice – or eventually, anyway. He noticed discomfort, first; his clothes were suddenly pinching, not sitting right, constricting him in unfamiliar ways. Then, when he started paying attention, he noticed that there was more of his stomach than he was used to, and when he went to bed happily bloated on pizza, his belly did not shrink back to normal in the morning. Or, it did, but normal was now several inches larger than it had been, and then larger still. 

Once he realized he was gaining weight, it suddenly seemed to come on very quickly. A shirt that had been snug one day was positively tight the next, and he could feel new flesh at his sides and around his back, his ass jigglier every morning and his face suddenly puffy. He couldn't button his pants under his belly anymore, and the belly itself began to feel heavy on his torso, pushing forward out from under his too-small shirts and squishing up uncomfortably towards his softening pecs when he sat down. Plus, there was a harsh red line etched onto the soft skin around his navel: a stretch mark, and more probably on their way. 

It was almost like one morning he was eyeing his bloated belly in the mirror and thinking, “Huh, I think I've put on some weight,” and the next he was lying flat on his back trying in vain to do up his jeans, a mound of belly obscuring his view of his hands. 

In between, what had happened? Well, he'd eaten. A lot. 

The only time he'd ever entered the school gym was to weigh himself, a few weeks after he'd returned from Thanksgiving, right around the time he stopped being able to comfortably pull his khakis up over his ass. He was frankly shocked to see he'd put on over thirty pounds, and wandered back to his dorm room in a daze.

His roommate, Anton, had greeted him with a beautifully-decorated chocolate cake that he'd lovingly put together in the terrible dorm kitchen. Anton was always baking these beautiful items, and was Gansey supposed to say no to such carefully-created works of pastry art?

No, of course not. Of course he had to eat three pieces and a few glasses of milk, and then he had to eat a bag of potato chips to take the sugary edge off, and then he had to eat another piece of cake, and then, because he wasn't quite stuffed, he had to eat the leftover container of lo mein that Anton didn't want. Then he had to lie on his side, curled around his pulsingly full belly, and eat one last piece of cake before he drifted off into a perfect slumber. 

But he couldn't say this to his mother.

“College is stressful,” he said instead. “I suppose I've been snacking more than usual.”

This was such a blinding understatement that he half-expected his mother to call him on it, but she only pursed her lips and looked again at the belly that was straining the buttons of his nicest shirt, and shook her head.

When he told Ronan this, Ronan howled with laughter. “Snacking,” Ronan said, and poked Gansey's soft side. “Yeah. You've just had a few too many fucking carrot sticks.”

When Gansey's mother looked at his belly, it was with complete dismay, and Gansey hated it. It was horrible and embarrassing and made him want to hide in a wall. But when Ronan looked at his belly, it was... not horrible. Ronan did not appear to be disgusted by it in the slightest, and though Gansey was still embarrassed, it was a very different kind of embarrassment. Almost... excitement. 

Very strange. 

It embarrassed him, how much he ate. There was no question of that. Now that he'd called attention to it and admitted to Ronan how much weight he'd put on, he was painfully aware of every excess bite that went into his mouth – painfully aware that he'd truly become rather gluttonous, used to eating whatever and whenever he wanted, and then some. 

“They only have waffles on Thursday,” he found himself saying that first morning, as if that was a good explanation for why he'd had three of them. “And it's freshly whipped cream,” trying to excuse the endless heaps of cream he added. “Real maple syrup. Organic butter.”

He tried to keep himself in check, he really did – and when eating “only” three enormous whipped cream and syrup-covered waffles counted as “in check,” he didn't know – but out of habit he grabbed a couple blueberry muffins as they left the dining hall, and he felt Ronan's eyes track him as he ate them both on their way to a Starbucks on the corner. 

At Starbucks, Ronan didn't comment on the change to Gansey's order, which for as long as they'd been friends had been a 12-ounce frappuccino, and was now a 24-ounce caramel frappuccino with three extra pumps of caramel – but Gansey knew he noticed.

Just like he noticed that Gansey had to lie down for a while after lunch, which had been two meatball subs – “The meatballs aren't very big” – and a plate of chili cheese fries – “I usually share these with someone” – followed by a bowl of macaroni and cheese – “I didn't notice it when we first came in” – and finished with a piece of apple pie and an extremely generous serving of soft-serve ice cream, for which Gansey had no excuse. By the time the pie was gone, he was having trouble taking a deep breath, and his stomach felt enormously full and stretched. It was just the way he liked it. 

“Thought you said you usually take the stairs,” was Ronan's only comment when Gansey pressed a finger against the button for the elevator.

Ronan took himself and Chainsaw for a walk while Gansey dozed off his big lunch, and by the time they returned an hour or so later he'd regained some of his energy and took them on a tour of the campus. 

He'd worried it would be somehow stressful, having Ronan here, but Ronan seemed mellow and willing to go along with whatever Gansey suggested. He was in a good mood, hurling snowballs at lampposts and climbing the famous John Harvard statue to sit in its metal lap and then leap wildly off, Chainsaw screaming her approval. Whenever they ran into someone Gansey knew, which wasn't that often since the campus was mostly deserted for winter break, he was polite – or as polite as Ronan Lynch could be, which meant he said hi and made a bare degree of eye contact and looked impressively handsome and dangerous. 

Around 4pm the light began to fade, and the last lingering fullness from Gansey's lunch faded with it. They had reservations to meet Gansey's Mythology professor at a Vietnamese place at 7, but this was the time Gansey usually found himself a pre-dinner snack, and he felt peckish. He was ashamed, however, to mention this to Ronan. Yet he also wanted to mention it; wanted Ronan to know just how deeply Gansey had descended into gluttony. 

“There's a little Italian bar in Harvard Square that does a very good fried calamari,” Gansey said. “Want to stop by before dinner?”

He said it like this on purpose, wanting to make it explicitly clear that yes, he wanted calamari, and yes, he planned to eat a full dinner afterwards. Ronan gave him a long, unreadable look, and said, “Okay.”

They sat in a booth, and Ronan drank a beer and ate three pieces of calamari, then watched Gansey slowly eat the rest of it and slowly drink his own beer, then slowly eat the four slices of bread and little dish of butter they'd been given with the appetizer. By the time he was done, it was nearly six.

“What should we do for the next hour?” Gansey asked, stretching luxuriously, then quickly pulling down his sweater where it began to ride up over the crest of his belly. 

“Have another beer here,” Ronan said. “I like it.”

“It is a nice little place, isn't it?” Gansey said. 

“You could get some more calamari,” Ronan suggested, and Gansey looked at him to see if he was being mocked, but Ronan didn't look like he was joking. He looked deadly serious. 

“We're having dinner in an hour,” Gansey said, and Ronan shrugged. Gansey was wearing the last pair of pants he had any hope of buttoning, and that was only because he'd bought the wrong size last year and never gotten around to returning them. They were a size above his old pants, yet were just barely fastened below the plump curve of his stomach, and he could feel them digging into his hips. He could tell he'd put on more weight in the week since Christmas – his mother's decree of a diet had driven him almost into a feeding frenzy, and this sweater would absolutely not stay down. On the other hand, the calamari had taken the edge off, but Gansey was nowhere near full. 

When the waitress came back, Gansey said, “Another round, please. And I'll have the fried ravioli appetizer, with a side of meatballs.”

Ronan looked at him sharply, and Gansey gave him a bland smile. 

“We have a whole hour to kill,” he said. 

“Jesus,” Ronan said, but he didn't sound judgmental. He sounded positively awed. “You can really fucking put it away.”

Gansey blushed. 

After the fried ravioli and meatballs and two heavy beers, Gansey was comfortably toeing the line of fullness. He could feel Ronan glancing at his belly as he hitched himself out of the booth, and he put a self-conscious hand to the swollen side of it, feeling how bloated he was already from his day of eating. It was so embarrassing. God, he was embarrassed. 

His Mythology professor was a woman called Bella Stein, past sixty, sharp and stern and brilliant, and she had immediately chosen Gansey as her favorite, and he'd chosen her. Not introducing Ronan had never occurred to him, but he was nervous for them to meet, worried they wouldn't like each other, worried that Ronan would be his terrible prickly self, even though he'd gotten so much better, lately, and worried too that Bella would push too hard, be too abrasive.

But his worry was for nothing. They got along immediately, in the same antagonistically respectful way that Ronan and Calla had immediately gotten along, and Gansey found himself left out of a heated conversation about a Latin text he'd never heard of. He did not mind in the slightest. Watching the two of them snap at each other filled him with a sense of total contentment, and being left out of the conversation gave him more time to attend to his dinner. 

He'd ordered a large bowl of noodle soup with a side of extra noodles and slices of beef and pork floating like oily islands on the rich broth, and added an order of sesame chicken wings and six fried pork dumplings. He could feel Ronan and Bella listening as he rattled it all off to the waitress, and when he was done Bella had said to Ronan, “A bit more of him now than when he left for college, hm?”

“Oh, stop,” Gansey said, feeling his face heat up. 

“He looks good,” Ronan said fiercely, and Gansey's cheeks got even hotter. Bella laughed, low and pleased. 

“He's loyal, this one,” she'd said to Gansey.

“Yes he is,” said Gansey, and that was how he'd known that Bella and Ronan would get along just fine.

Now he focused on slurping up the last spoonfuls of broth and working the last shreds of meat from his chicken wings. The dumplings and noodles were long gone, and he felt hugely stuffed and sloshy with the soup's hot broth. It was as if he could feel every bite of everything he'd eaten that day, his belly so tight and bloated that he couldn't properly bend over it. He finished his soup with a gasp and had to sit back in the booth and let his stomach push out in front of him, the button of his pants straining so badly he was worried it might pop. It hurt to breathe. 

Bella and Ronan had both finished eating long ago and were having coffee, and Gansey would have liked one too, to settle his stomach, only he thought if he put anything else into it he might pass out. He could barely track the conversation, and when he looked down he was chagrined to see how round and obvious his belly was, rising and falling shallowly with his difficult breaths. He wrapped an arm around it casually, trying not to let on how incredibly overstuffed he was, though there was probably no missing it. 

Finally Bella excused herself to the bathroom, and Gansey used her absence as a chance to finally work that taxed button free of its confining button hole, propriety be damned. But it was a small relief. 

“Full, Dick?” Ronan said. 

“Oh, god, yes,” Gansey groaned. “I shouldn't have finished your egg rolls.”

“You shouldn't have eaten a full meal before we came here,” Ronan said, and if Gansey wasn't already flushed and hot from eating, he'd have turned red. 

“It seems,” Gansey said, “that I have a serious lack of self-control. Ronan, I honestly don't think I can move. How are we going to walk back?”

“They don't close for a while,” Ronan said. “I'll wait.”

“You don't mind?”

“I'll have another beer. You want anything?”

“God, shut up.”

When Bella returned, there was a brief squabble over the check, which Gansey won handily – “For one thing, it's my father's credit card, for another, I ate more than either of you combined” – and then Bella gathered her purse and coat. 

“Ronan, it was very good to meet you,” she said. “You could give half these students a run for their money. Let me know if you reconsider college, and I'll write you a recommendation.”

“I fucking hate school,” Ronan said. “But it was nice to meet you, too.”

After she'd left, Gansey slouched further into his chair and hugged his belly with both arms. 

“A little too much snacking,” Gansey said. “That's what I told my mother.”

He and Ronan looked at the table full of Gansey's dishes, and cracked up. Gansey was panting helplessly and crying out, “Oh, ouch, no, it hurts, stop,” gripping his poor belly and trying to get himself under control but unable to stop laughing. 

“I wish you didn't have to leave,” Gansey said eventually.

“I just got here.”

“Yes, but I'm already nostalgic.”

Ronan was quiet for a while, then said, “I don't have to be back until February 5th. So technically I could stay as long as a month.”

“Would you?” Gansey said, his heart suddenly as full as his stomach. 

“Maybe,” Ronan said. “If it's not too fucking boring around here.”

:::

He did stay a month, and what a month it was. Gansey took him all over Boston and Cambridge, and they spent a freezing cold, snowy day at the North Shore, walking along the beach and then ensconcing themselves in a little inn with a blazing fireplace, where Gansey ate fried oysters and stuffed lobster and french fries and clam chowder until he felt he was going to pop. They went to the North End, and Gansey gorged himself on bruschetta and pasta and bread and cannoli. They visited Chinatown, where Gansey ate over a hundred dollars worth of Dim Sum and then missed their subway stop because he'd fallen asleep over his throbbing belly. 

In the first week of Ronan's visit, Gansey finally gave into the truth and bought himself new clothes. He was somewhat startled to find that he'd gone up three whole sizes in pants and had moved from L to XL in most shirts, which was a bit hard to face, but it was so very nice to be wearing clothes that fit that he stopped minding after a few days. Besides, the XLs were pretty loose on him. 

At least, loose on him for now. It was hard to avoid the fact that he was still steadily putting on weight, and he could see and feel changes in his body from week to week. He felt puffy and swollen all over, his arms bigger and heavier, his sides getting wide and beginning to crease at his hips where his love handles were swelling, and his thighs now touched and rubbed together when he walked. His ass was starting to spread in all directions, and the little hint of softness beneath his chin was starting to blossom in earnest. 

And his belly was... a belly. He could feel it getting bigger and roundier and heavier with every bite he pushed into it, and the skin of it was itchy and sensitive, stretch marks popping up seemingly overnight. 

Yet he kept eating. Every day, at every meal, he stuffed himself until it hurt, until his belly was firm to the touch and he couldn't quite breathe, until he had to nap it off for a few hours before he could even carry on a decent conversation. And he hadn't entirely lied to his mother, because did plenty of snacking, too – ate bags of chips while he was working side-by-side with Bella in her office, ate cupcakes while he watched Ronan and Chainsaw run around Boston Harbor, ate sleepy pizzas late at night, his belly poking roundly out of one of his old crew shirts, his thighs soft and pale and spreading in his boxers, Ronan curled at the foot of his bed and watching him put away slice after slice. 

Something about Ronan's steady gaze made him even hungrier than normal, made him want to push himself too far, as if he were challening Ronan to comment or to judge him or to tease him, or something; he wanted some kind of reaction he couldn't articulate. But Ronan took it in stride, as if Gansey had always eaten enough for three people, as if he'd always had a belly that jutted out like a ship's prow and an ass that felt fatter every day. 

He knew he should be grateful that his best friend didn't care about these changes, and he was grateful. It was good and kind that Ronan didn't comment. It was very good, and he was glad, he was.

“The check-in with my mother's nutritionist is tomorrow,” he told Ronan one night at the end of January, the third week of Ronan's visit. “It's going to be a battle.”

“Yeah,” Ronan said. He was sitting at the foot of Gansey's bed, and he'd gone very still as soon as Gansey had brought it up, his eyes bright and intense. 

“I'm pretty sure I've put on more weight,” Gansey said, putting a hand on his belly. “Do you think?” He didn't know why he said it: anyone with eyes could see that Gansey had added pounds. 

“You never stop fucking eating, so yeah, I think,” Ronan said. 

Gansey looked down at the pint of ice cream he'd been working on, and sighed. “God. You're right, of course you're right. I'm starting to feel pretty big.”

Ronan licked his lips. “Yeah?”

“Yes. I'm... I think I must've put on at least ten pounds since Christmas, and this is feeling heavy.” He pushed the side of his belly. “You know, I can't remember the last time I felt hungry.” He picked up his ice cream and put a melty spoonful in his mouth. 

“How much do you think it costs to feed you?” Ronan said, very nonchalantly, but with an edge to his voice that sent a strange shiver down Gansey's spine.

“I don't know,” Gansey said. “Quite a lot, I'd imagine.” He pressed the cold carton of ice cream against the hot stretch of his belly and spooned some more into his mouth. 

“You ate about two hundred dollars worth of dinner tonight, I bet,” Ronan said. 

“Oh, more,” Gansey said, thinking. “The tasting menu alone was one-fifty, plus the steak and the cheese plate... And the tiramisu. With the wine, it was well over three hundred.”

Ronan tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling and didn't say anything, and Gansey found, to his horror, that recounting this expenditure was doing unexpected things to his bloodflow – specifically, to where his blood was choosing to gather. Hastily he put another bite of ice cream into his mouth and tried to think of unpleasant things like Opal eating raw turkeys, which did the trick pretty quickly. 

Eventually Ronan said, “What are you going to tell the nutritionist?”

“Well,” said Gansey. “I guess I'll have to tell her to piss up a rope.”

Ronan laughed so hard he tipped off the bed. 

:::

“234,” the nutritionist said, adjusting the scale. “In your preliminary examination, you were 213, which means --” She paused, then looked up at Gansey over the edges of her bifocals. “Richard, you've put on 21 pounds since Christmas.”

“Have I?” Gansey said. 

“That was hardly more than a month ago. And according to these records, when you saw your physician last August you were at a very healthy 172, which means you've put on over 60 pounds since the summer. That's a lot of weight to gain in such a short time, surely you realize that.”

“It does sound like a lot,” Gansey said. 

The nutritionist sat behind her desk looking harried, and gestured for him to take a seat. He did so, painfully aware of the way his belly was beginning to settle on his lap when he sat, and aware, too, of how full he still was from the fried chicken and ice cream sundae he'd had for lunch, how his stomach was stuffed big and round and felt like the only thing anyone would see when they looked at him. He hunched forward, trying in vain to appear smaller, though he suspected he only succeeded in pushing his belly out further, so he gave up and leaned back in the chair, tugging at the 'new' sweater that didn't quite want to cover him after the addition of – god, 20 pounds.

“Have you been keeping a food diary?” the nutritionist said. “Have you been adhering to our rules?”

“Well,” hedged Gansey. 

“Richard, please be honest. If you've gained this much weight on a diet, then we're looking at a medical cause, so --”

“No, it's me,” Gansey said. “I mean – I don't – the fact is, I eat quite a lot. I haven't been dieting. I'm sorry.”

“Do you feel motivated to lose this weight?” she said. 

“Uh,” Gansey said. “To be honest with you ma'am, not particularly.”

She looked at him for a long, long time, then sighed and began to scribble down notes in her journal. “The longer you hold onto weight, the harder it is to lose,” she said. “You've always been very fit, and you easily could be again, but the more you put on the harder it'll be to get rid of it. Personally I believe that the BMI is an outdated system, but it's still in use, and by that system you're already overweight. I advise you to think about that.”

Gansey shifted uncomfortably in the chair, feeling the heavy pull of his belly and the thick new padding of his sides and ass. He felt big and swollen and ashamed – and inexplicably he felt, too, that he wished Ronan was in here, watching his humiliation. 

“I know I've – I know,” Gansey said finally. “I'm sorry.”

“No, don't apologize,” she said. “Look, all your other tests were good, you're still quite healthy. But it's clear you're eating way too much for your caloric needs, and putting on that much weight so quickly can't be comfortable.”

“It's not entirely,” Gansey admitted, shifting again in the chair. “But only because I'm not used to it.”

“If you don't watch what you eat, you'll have to get used to even more,” she said. “It's your choice. My advice, of course, is to follow this diet – but if you choose not to follow my advice, well... At least try and stay healthy. Fruits and vegetables along with whatever else you're eating. Regular exercise. You go to Harvard, you're smart, you know the drill.”

“Yes ma'am,” he said. “May I ask when exactly you'll be telling my mother about this?”

“I won't tell your mother anything unless you want me to,” she said, looking affronted. “She may be paying me, but you're not a minor and so you're covered by client confidentiality. Would you like me to tell her?”

Gansey gave this some real thought. On the one hand, he didn't want his mother to know he'd put on another 20 pounds instead of losing it, and he absolutely didn't want to deal with the arguments he'd have to have. On the other hand, he didn't want to tell her himself – nor did he want to show up at Easter and have to bear her disappointment upon seeing him. His mother abhorred surprises. 

“Yes, actually,” Gansey said. “Would you break the news to her? And, uh, would you include the part about how I'm healthy otherwise?”

The nutritionist cracked a brief smile, then sighed. “Fine,” she said. She glanced down at her papers. “We have another appointment in early April -- how about I wait until then to update her.”

"That would be perfect," Gansey said, relieved. Surely he'd drop some weight by then. He thanked her and got to his feet, uncomfortably aware of how his belly seemed to lead the way, and how big his ass was getting. He zipped up his winter coat, and christ, even that was getting snug, he had to suck his belly in a little to get it zipped, and he pushed out the doors to find Ronan and Chainsaw waiting for him on the steps. 

“Well,” said Gansey. “That was excruciating. But she's not going to tell my mother. I've put on another 20 pounds, Ronan, just since Christmas. Over 60 pounds since I started college. I can't believe it.”

“You can't?”

Gansey punched him lightly on the arm, then let out a long sigh. “I'm getting fat, Lynch,” he said. “That's the truth of it.”

Ronan took such a sharp breath through his nose that Gansey heard it. “Yeah,” Ronan said. “You are.”

“I don't think any Gansey has ever been overweight, in the history of Ganseys,” Gansey said. 

“Until now,” Ronan said, and Gansey let out a slightly hysterical laugh. 

“I'm a trailblazer,” he said. 

“An explorer of new lands,” Ronan said. 

“Boldly going where no Gansey has gone before,” Gansey said. 

“Is it too early for dinner?” Ronan asked.

Gansey paused. “We had lunch three hours ago. It's only four o'clock.”

“I repeat,” Ronan said. “Is it too early for dinner.”

Gansey said, “I could eat.”

:::

Ronan left a week later, and Gansey tried not to mope around too much, but it was hard. He'd grown used to having Ronan around, and he felt strangely bereft without him. He couldn't stop thinking about him, and missing him. With Ronan gone, he felt unmoored and a little wild, his appetite even more insatiable than ever, and he found himself eating odd things at odd times: seeking out ice cream for breakfast, stuffing himself with all-you-can-eat pancakes at an-all night diner at 1am, eating a block of cream cheese with a bag of Doritos for lunch. Surely Ronan would have to say something about this, he'd think, sitting on a bench eating hot dogs at 8am. Surely Ronan would tease me, at least. Though why he wanted that, he couldn't say. 

The Harvard campus filled back up, and his roommate Anton came back from break looking tanned and thin from a month of surfing. He burst through their door to find Gansey propped up in bed, arms wrapped around a belly that was painfully stuffed from the sheet cake he'd eaten for breakfast.

“Damn bro!” Anton said. “No way, nuh-uh, what'd I tell you about this shit?” He swooped down and picked up the empty cake box at Gansey's side.

“You weren't here,” Gansey defended himself. “I had to resort to less than ideal measures.”

“I tried this avocado cake in Cali,” Anton said excitedly, “and I think I figured out how to make it, you're gonna love it bro, trust me.” He paused, looking Gansey up and down. “Damn, but you filled out, huh?”

There was no malice in his voice, but Gansey's cheeks grew hot. “I've been overdoing it in the dining halls,” Gansey said. 

“Yeah, looks like,” Anton said. “Want to go grab lunch? I hear there's a new burger joint by the park.”

Gansey had eaten an entire cake for breakfast. It had taken several hours. He reminded himself of this as he hoisted to his feet, one hand bracing his stuffed belly, and he hoped Anton didn't comment on the sweatpants. The pants he'd bought over a month ago with Ronan were uncomfortably snug, and though he could, technically, button them, it seemed best for everyone if he did not. He'd been chagrined to find that his sweatpants were not the haven of comfort he remembered, and he had to pull them low beneath the swell of his belly, his hips folding the waistband down and the thick material stretched over his ass and thighs. He tugged his sweater down and pulled on his coat, sucking in his full belly with some effort so he could zip it up, and promised himself he'd eat just one burger, like a normal person.

Anton chattered about his vacation as they walked to the restaurant, and Gansey tried not to let on how out of breath he was, both from cake he'd eaten and from Anton's quick pace. He was sweating lightly by the time he dropped into the booth, and he unzipped his tight coat with relief, his tummy pushing happily back out and settling roundly on his thighs.

“Wow,” Anton said, reading the menu. “They have cake shakes. A piece of cake in a milkshake.”

“I had cake for breakfast,” Gansey said, but it struck him as a very good idea, somehow, to eat only cake for the rest of the day. It was the kind of thing Ronan would find unreasonably funny. 

So for lunch he had a chocolate cake shake with a big slice of red velvet cake to go along with it, and for a post-lunch snack he had a piece of cherry cheesecake. The dining hall that evening had both carrot cake and a strawberry cream cake, and Gansey had two slices of each, plus three brownies and several dishes of ice cream. 

By the time night rolled around he felt giddy and ill from all the sugar, but he went to a friend's dorm room to watch a movie and someone had brought an ice cream cake, which seemed like fate, so he ate a slice to be polite, and then another, and then another, and then there was only a corner left so he finished it off and immediately fell asleep on Anton's shoulder. 

When Anton jostled him awake, he woke with a groan, feeling so stuffed and sleepy and heavy that it took a couple tries to sit upright – he had to roll to the side a little to sit up around the packed mound of his tummy, and getting undressed for bed was a chore. He had to hold his breath as he leaned down over his stomach to unlace his shoes, and peeling himself out of his tight sweater left him breathless and overheated. 

He tugged on his too-snug sleeping tee and sat on his bed with a thump, watching his belly roll out before him. There was a deep crease beneath his pecs where it was becoming a sloping shelf, and a thick wedge of underbelly poked out from beneath his shirt. It felt warm and very heavy, and he put his hands on it, feeling how tight and full it was from a full day of eating pure sugar and fat. 

God, he had put on so much weight.

“Can you tell I've gained sixty pounds?” he asked Anton.

“Totally bro,” said Anton, already in his bed, his eyes drooping shut. 

Gansey climbed under the blankets and rolled onto his side, curled around his throbbing stomach. He pulled his knees up until his could feel his tummy against his thighs, and felt so ashamed of himself that the feeling started turning, burning, until he couldn't stand it anymore and picked up his phone.

Without letting himself think too hard about it, he texted Ronan, “I am so full, Lynch. I ate too much and I can't fall asleep.”

The response was lightning-quick, which was uncharacteristic. “What did you eat”

“Cake,” Gansey wrote back. “Only cake, all day.” And then, because it was late and he was so embarrassed and his stomach was hurting badly, he listed everything he'd eaten. It filled up nearly a whole screen of his phone, and he sent it before he could second-guess himself, lip caught between his teeth.

He watched the little dots appear that meant Ronan was typing, then watched them stop, then start again. Then stop again. 

“Come on, Ronan,” he murmured. For some reason, his heart was pounding in his chest. 

Finally, the dots picked up again, and Ronan's response came.

“Tomorrow,” he had written, “you should only eat pasta.”

And Gansey, his smile so wide his cheeks hurt, wrote back, “All right.”

:::

It became a thing between them. 

Each evening, Gansey would text Ronan to list what he'd eaten, proving that he had followed Ronan's suggestion, and Ronan would offer another suggestion.

“Tomorrow you should only eat burgers.”

“Tomorrow you should eat only things with cheese on them.”

“Tomorrow you should eat only pizza.”

Gansey could not explain why it felt so absolutely electrifying to do as Ronan suggested. He couldn't explain the incredible thrill he got from ordering a large meat-lover's pizza at 7am before his first class, taking the elevator down to meet the delivery girl and watching her notice how ill-fitting his shirt was, knowing she was wondering what kind of a glutton ordered pizza for breakfast, then tucking himself back into bed with the hot box and slowly making his way through it while he reviewed his notes for a test. He could not explain why he felt a zing all the way through his body when he dropped a pepperoni and it landed on the shelf of his belly, nor why he so relished the feeling of filling himself for the first time each morning, even when he woke still bloated and sore from the previous day's consumption. 

“Gansey,” Bella said one evening, a week or so after he and Ronan had started their odd game. “Didn't anyone ever tell you donuts aren't a dinner food? Much less an entire box of them.”

Gansey looked up from the book he was underlining, still chewing a bite of chocolate glazed. He swallowed. “I did hear something about that, yes.”

“If you're hungry, eat a sandwich or something.”

Gansey had eaten roughly thirty donuts since he'd woken up. He was definitely not hungry. “Just have a craving for donuts,” he said. 

“Like you had a craving for tacos the other day?”

They'd worked together all day, so between lunch and dinner she'd seen him plow through thirteen tacos. “Yes,” he said. “Like that.”

“Do you ever get a craving for, say, a salad?”

He flushed and draped a hand protectively across his belly. “What do you think?”

She shook her head. “I think you're getting awfully chunky, is what,” she said bluntly. “But I don't think you mind, do you.”

His cheeks were flaming, but he said, “Not particularly.”

“Ah, youth,” she said dramatically. “In my day we took acid and slept with strangers. Your generation apparently... eats donuts.”

“I'm living on the edge,” Gansey agreed, reaching for a jelly donut. 

“Oh, I think your edges are pretty much gone,” Bella said, patting him on one fleshy cheek. “Just don't get sugar all over that book. It's worth more than you weigh, and it'll only go up with age.”

“Like me, apparently,” Gansey said ruefully, and jostled his tummy gently with the inside of his wrist, sending a shower of powdered sugar down onto his shirt. “Oops. Maybe I'll finish this before I touch that book again.”

“Next time, get a craving for a nice, neat food,” Bella said. “Okay?”

When this story was recounted to him, Ronan's suggestion was, of course, “Chicken wings. Really saucy ones.”

Luckily, Gansey wasn't working with Bella that day, but he did get some strange looks from his friends when they went to a diner for breakfast.

Aside from Bella, he was surprised by how seldom people commented on his weight. It was politeness that stopped them, he knew that, because of course they had to've noticed, but nobody said a word, not even when he himself brought it up.

“God, I'm full,” he said one evening, slouched on his friend Sara's couch after a movie night. 

It was the end of March, and he and Ronan had been playing their strange game off-and-on for over a month. But the night before, Ronan had given him a very different kind challenge – one that had sent shocking tingles down his spine when he read the text. 

“Eat $500 worth of food tomorrow. Wine doesn't count.”

It was proving extremely difficult, mostly because he simply didn't have time that day to venture too far off-campus in search of the most expensive places. He'd eaten breakfast at an upscale cafe where he'd had to bolt down three lobster omelettes and a plate of steak and eggs, which still only took him down $150, and since he was studying and couldn't get away for lunch he'd ordered a frightening amount of expensive Thai delivery to his dorm room that only brought his total up to $230. Dinner too had to be eaten near the University because of a night class, so he went to a pricey Italian place and had yet more steak and lobster in the form of tenderloin and ravioli, and he'd choked down twelve $6-each oysters from the raw bar. He'd planned to have dessert, too, but he was so absolutely stuffed he couldn't do it – stuffed with money, with undiluted indulgence. 

By the time dinner was over he still had $35 left to spend. 

He sat in the back of the room in his night class, belly so swollen and churning it felt hot to the touch, pushing heavily out onto his lap, and so round he couldn't get his arm around the whole thing anymore. He sat back and rested a hand on the hard bloated crest of it and tried to figure out what he could eat before he went to sleep that would bring his total to $500 but wouldn't destroy him. 

Luckily, his night class was three hours long, and by the time it was over he felt marginally less like he was going to keel over. It was 10pm and when his friends at movie night suggested pizza, he had to acquiesce. 

They'd grown used to him ordering whole pizzas for himself – but still he saw a few raised eyebrows when he'd put in for an extra-large with literally everything, an order that put him at $502 exactly. 

Yet they said nothing. No comment when the pizzas came and Gansey settled his enormous box across his knees, no comment when it was too big to stay put and he wedged the edge under his stomach to keep it from falling, no comment when he got so hot and breathless halfway through that he had to take a long break, his breath straining audibly, greasy fingers pressing gingerly into the hugely distended mound of his fully tummy. Nobody said a damn thing.

So: “God, I'm full,” Gansey said. 

He was tilted against the armrest, half-reclined sideways, so enormously bloated that his belly felt like an immovable ball he had to maneuver around, his sweater caught in the crease of his hip and exposing a fleshy handful of love handle. He pushed another bite of toppings-laden pizza into his mouth and groaned around it. 

Still, his friends didn't comment.

“Can barely breathe,” Gansey said, and took another huge bite. “Oh, jesus. Jesus, I'm stuffed. Shouldn't have eaten so much at dinner.”

Finally, that got someone's attention. 

“This wasn't dinner?” Sara said, her head swiveling to stare at him. 

“It's 10pm,” Gansey said, feigning wide-eyed innocence. “I had dinner hours ago.” He chewed and swallowed and reached for another piece of pizza. “God, I feel like I'm about to burst.”

“You look it,” his friend Ashley said, then put her hand over her mouth like she couldn't believe her own rudeness.

This, for some reason, was exactly what Gansey had been aiming for. 

“Oh, I know,” he said, wrapping an arm around his belly as far as it would go, and lowering pizza into his mouth with the other hand. He spoke around the mouthful, his own politeness gone out the window. “I know I've put on some weight recently.”

This was met with nervous titters, and had the exact opposite effect he'd intended: everybody changed the subject. They started watching YouTube cat videos, instead, and Gansey glumly finished the pizza without another comment. 

Eventually, everybody started heading for the door, and Gansey wanted to follow. He wanted nothing more than to be in his bed, lying on his side, rubbing his belly, but he couldn't follow, because he could not get up. 

He tried – he put a hand to the armrest of the couch and tried to leverage himself up, but he was too full to lean over his belly, so he spread his legs and tried to let it bloat into the space between them so he could lean over enough to push into a stand, but his thighs were too chunky and the effort made him dizzy and nauseous, so he slid to the edge and tried to get up belly-first, but he was too loopy and weak from fullness, so he collapsed back against the couch and tried to catch his breath, praying nobody had noticed his struggle.

“Sara,” he said, going for casual. “Mind if I conk out on your couch tonight? Anton's got a girl in the room.”

It wasn't the first time he'd done this, and he hoped to god she didn't notice the real reason he was asking. 

“Sure,” she said, yawning. “Lemme grab you a blanket.”

He tipped sideways and managed to get his legs up, toeing off his boat shoes and letting them drop to the floor, then spent a moment grunting his way into a comfortable position on his side. When he was curled in the fetal position, one arm slung over his pounding belly, he realized that at its roundest curve, right above his belly button, his tummy touched the edge of the couch. It had definitely not done that when he'd slept here last, a few weeks ago. A few more pounds and it would overlap altogether. 

Christ, he was out of control. He worked a hand under his tight shirt and stroked the extra-soft new ridges of skin where his stretchmarks were exploding in sun-rays from his navel, following the round bulge of his underbelly and tracing red streaks across his pale sides. He had a few on his biceps, too, and one right near his left nipple. 

He had gained so much weight, so quickly, his skin literally couldn't hold him. 

He'd eaten so much he couldn't get off a goddamn couch. 

These thoughts simultaneously horrified and thrilled him. Intellectually, when he considered how large he was letting himself get, he was appalled. He hadn't weighed himself since the nutritionist, but he'd eaten himself out of another size of pants and his belly was beginning to really get in the way, so round and firm it was difficult to bend over even when he wasn't entirely stuffed, and quite heavy. The heavier he got, the lazier he got, and the lazier he got, the more out-of-shape he became, and he was really noticing. A walk across campus left him winded and overheated, and when out of curiosity he'd taken the stairs the six flights to his dorm the other day, he'd had to pause on each landing to catch his breath, one hand pressed to the side of his heaving stomach, and had given up on the fourth floor and taken the elevator the remaining two flights.

Intellectually, this was frightening.

But emotionally...

God, emotionally it was incredible. There was something about being this lazy that satisfied a core of him he hadn't known needed satisfying. He loved sitting on the couch with his big belly proudly swollen out in front of him while his friends brought him beers and chips and soda. He loved waking up in the morning and stretching out a hand to the mini-fridge for a melty pint of ice cream, eating it in bed with the sun coming through the window and finishing the whole thing before his roommate even woke up. He loved ordering Chinese takeout in the middle of the day simply because he was too lazy to walk to the dining hall, and he could afford it. 

Sara came back to cover him with a blanket, and Gansey murmured a tired thank-you as she tiptoed to her room. He sighed shallowly, still too full to take a real deep breath, then took his phone from his pocket and sent Ronan the pictures he'd taken that day of all his reciepts. 

Ronan wrote back instantly. 

“Jesus Christ Gansey.”

Then, a second later, “You did real good.”

A flush of pure happiness suffused Gansey, and, without letting himself think too hard about what he was doing, he raised the phone and snapped a selfie. In it he was obviously sleepy, his hair tousled, his chin slightly doubled from his curled position, his cheeks puffy, and he looked extremely full. His belly surged huge and round at his side and his rucked-up sweater showed off the red claw of stretchmarks, his tummy packed so tightly the skin was almost shiny from being stretched. He looked at the picture, and couldn't quite believe it was him. 

He sent the picture to Ronan. 

A second after he pressed send he was seized with absolute panic, and he struggled to sit up, frantically trying to delete it, but of course it was too late and the photo was on its way. Why? Why on earth had he thought it a good idea to send his best friend such an unflattering photo, a photo that so clearly showed the extent of his gluttony, a photo so embarrassing it send waves of heat through his body? 

Those telltale dots appeared at the bottom of the phone screen, and Gansey lay back, too full to stay sitting up but too panicked to roll back onto his side, his heart thudding, belly making tiny noises of digestive and emotional distress. What was Ronan typing? Why was it taking him so goddamn long?

And then, finally, a response that left Gansey lightheaded and disbelieving: 

“That is the hottest fucking thing I've ever seen.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, I guess this is going to be longer than I intended. Turns out I loovvvvveee writing this pairing, oh my. Also, this chapter should probably be called CAKE CAKE CAKE, sorry if that was a spoiler. 
> 
> Warnings for complicated humiliation still hold strong here!!!

The instant Ronan sent the text, he regretted it. 

He sat on the kitchen floor staring at his phone, willing Gansey to reply, to say something, anything, but there was nothing. Radio silence. And fuck, of course there was, what was Gansey supposed to say when his best friend texted him something like that out of fucking nowhere? 

Only it hadn't felt out of nowhere, when he'd sent it. It felt like the only thing he could say, the obvious response to a photo so mindblowingly sexy that Ronan had literally fallen to his knees, had sank down midway through filling a glass of water and just stared at that image of Gansey looking so impossibly plump and spoiled on $500 worth of food that it seemed an actual crime not to give an honest reaction. 

And hadn't they been building to this for weeks? Had it all been in Ronan's head? The little game they'd been playing, Ronan telling Gansey what to eat and Gansey doing it without question, then fucking texting Ronan the evidence, as if Ronan needed another reason to lie awake at night, that wasn't normal best-friend behavior, was it? It verged on something else, something Ronan couldn't look at directly without combusting. 

But he'd let Gansey lead, more or less. He'd waited for a sign from Gansey, anything, and when that selfie had appeared like a North star in a dark sky, it had seemed like a sign. 

Now, though, he wasn't so sure. 

He finally got himself off the floor and finished filling his water glass, then abandoned it in favor of hooking a six pack from the fridge and heading up to his bed. He couldn't stop looking at that picture, though – he looked at it as he trudged up the stairs, looked at it as he climbed into his bed, looked at it as he popped the cap off a beer and drank half of it in one thirsty gulp. Gansey had been driving him to such distraction that he wasn't even able to dream properly, and he'd been waking up in the morning clutching things like brown bags full of fast food wrappers and tiny useless scales. (Curious, he'd tried dreaming food, but it all tasted off and made him feel nauseous in his head and hands, which was a sensation that was impossible to describe and so Ronan didn't tell anyone.) He knew he'd barely sleep tonight, the image of Gansey tousled and sleepy and swollen ringing around in his brain like beautiful static, and the thought of that stupid fucking text pounding away at his nervous system. 

With the help of the alcohol he managed a fiftful few hours, and woke at first light. He threw himself into the morning's work, feeding all the animals and milking the cows in the chilly spring air, then he spent a little while fixing the rocking chair that usually sat in Opal's room. She loved it so much she kept breaking the damn thing. 

It was nearly 10am when he finally allowed himself to look at his phone, and when he saw that Gansey had finally texted back his heart began to race so fast he had to sit down on the couch and take a few deep breaths before he opened the text. 

Gansey had written, “I can never tell when you're being serious, Lynch.”

Ronan re-read it, frustration and relief coursing through him. Gansey was giving him an out. A chance to backtrack, to make it into a joke, and Ronan should take it gracefully – but to do that, he would have to lie. He would have to lie, and keep on lying, pretending he didn't think Gansey was the most spectacular person on the planet, pretending that the weight Gansey was steadily gaining wasn't the most arousing thing he'd ever witnessed. And Ronan did not lie. 

So, hands nearly shaking, he texted back, “I'm serious.”

Gansey wrote back, “We are talking about the same picture? The one where I look like a beached whale?”

Ronan wrote, “You look fucking good.”

And then, because if this wasn't a time for the telephone Ronan didn't know what ever would be, he dialed Gansey's number.

Gansey picked up almost immediately. “You're calling me,” he said. 

“Yeah,” said Ronan. Now that he had him on the line, he didn't know what to say. He chewed nervously at his bracelets and waited, but it seemed like Gansey was waiting, too, so Ronan said, “To be perfectly fucking clear. I liked that picture a lot.”

Gansey pulled in a quick breath. When he spoke, though, he sounded calm and authoritative, as always. “I ate so much I couldn't stand up, Ronan. I didn't even know that was possible.”

“Me neither.”

“I'm still full this morning,” Gansey said. “I skipped class because of it. I never skip class.”

“Apparently you do.”

“I'm in my bed, now,” Gansey said. “Wearing sweatpants, because they're the only things that fit me anymore, and the truth is they don't actually fit me. I took out the drawstring altogether, and they're still not entirely comfortable.”

Ronan took a shaky breath. “You should get some new clothes, then.”

“What's the point?” Gansey said. “I'll probably eat my way out of those, too.”

“Not like you can't afford it,” Ronan said. 

“That's true,” Gansey said, sounding startled. “I guess it doesn't really matter if I keep buying new things.” His voice was muffled somehow, a strange sound accompanying it, and Ronan perked up.

“Gansey,” he said. “Are you eating something right now?”

“Hm? Oh – yes.” 

“What.”

“Just a piece of this lemon cake that Anton made.”

“I thought you said you were still so full you had to skip class.”

Gansey coughed delicately. “Well, that's true. But it's also true that lemon cake is delicious. Anyway, I just finished.”

“Was that your first piece?”

“Yes.”

“Have another one,” said Ronan, breath caught high in his chest.

There was a pause, then Gansey said, “All right. Hang on.”

A muffled thud, a shuffling sound, a silence. Then, “Okay.” Gansey's voice was thick again. “I wish you could try this. It really is good.”

“I'm going to stay on the phone with you,” Ronan said, “until the cake is gone.”

Gansey sucked in a breath. “Ronan,” he said. “I haven't even fully digested everything I ate yesterday. The skin on my stomach is so sensitive I can't even wear a shirt right now. And you want me to eat a whole cake?”

“Yes,” Ronan said. 

“Why?” Gansey said, his voice low. 

“Well. Do you want to eat it?”

There was a long pause, and Gansey said, “Yes I do.”

“Why, Gansey?”

“I don't know.”

“You do know,” Ronan said. “You want to eat it because it tastes good, and because you can, and because you're a spoiled rich boy who's too fat to fit into any of his clothes, and because you like the way it makes you feel.”

“Yes,” Gansey said. 

“Well, I like all that shit, too,” Ronan said. “I like how fucking spoiled you are. I like how you can't control yourself, and I like how big you're getting. I really fucking like it a lot, Gansey. I really like _you._ ”

“I like you too,” Gansey said, his voice ragged. “I like what we've been doing.”

“Then quit stalling and eat the fucking cake.” Ronan was leaned forward on the couch, phone pressed tight to his ear, his whole body a taut bowstring of anticipation. 

“All right,” Gansey said. 

“Talk to me while you do it,” Ronan said. “I want to hear you.”

For the next hour or so, Ronan, who was always in motion, did not move from the couch. Instead he listened to Gansey chew and swallow, listened to his breath get more and more labored, listened to him sigh and belch and utter little groans of discomfort, listened as he got too out of breath to carry on a conversation and listened as he let out low, soft moans of pain, panting, “God I'm – can barely – oh god I'm full.” 

“How much do you have left?”

“About two slices.”

“Are you sitting up?”

“No, I'm – ugh, god. I had to lie – hurrp, 'scuse me – I had to lie, lie on my side.”

“Keep going,” Ronan said. “You're doing so well.”

“Oh Ronan, it – god, at this rate I'm – huurrp – I won't fit into the Pig, I'll – ahrrp, ugh, I'll have to – god, I...”

Gansey sounded absolutely wrecked, and it was absolutely wrecking Ronan. He was hard as a diamond in his jeans, but he didn't want to do anything about it, didn't want to move for fear of breaking whatever incredible thing was happening here. 

“I look like I've been, inflated,” Gansey panted. “My stomach is, so round. Ugh, this is the last –” a noisy mastication “--that was the last bite. I'm done! Oh god oh god. Oh I can't believe I... jesus I've never...” He let out a long resonant belch. “Sorry. Christ. God I'm so stuffed.”

“Can you get up?”

“Ha! No.”

“Good,” Ronan said fiercely. “Good. Take a break now. You earned it. Take a nap, sleep it off.”

“Wish you were here,” Gansey said. 

“Me too,” Ronan said.

“What would you... hurrrp... do if... you were here?”

“I'd rub that big fucking belly of yours.”

“Ugh, yes,” Gansey said. “What else?”

Ronan rocked back and forth on the couch, barely able to think straight. “I'd – I'd bite you,” he said.

“Bite me?” Gansey said, sounding amused.

“Yeah, I'd – god, Gansey, I've never dirty-talked someone before, give me a break.”

“I want to see you,” Gansey said. “You know I'm coming down for...” he lost his breath, caught it. “Easter in DC. Then...” Burp. “Sorry. Then I'll stop only a day or two in... Henrietta. It's not enough. Will you,” belch, “Will you come to DC for Easter?”

“With your family?” Ronan said.

“I want to see you,” Gansey repeated. “And I could use... an ally.”

“Yes,” Ronan said immediately. “Yeah, I'll come, and I'll kill anyone who says shit about your weight.”

“Please don't,” Gansey said. “Despite her flaws, I – ugh – I rather love my mother.”

“Two weeks away,” Ronan said. “That's just two weeks away. Until then...”

“Yes?”

“Well, get some new fucking clothes. Shit you're comfortable in.”

“I will.” Gansey let out a soft, pained sigh. “I miss you.”

“Yeah,” Ronan said. “You too.” He swallowed. “Take a nap.”

“Okay.”

“You did real good.”

“Thank you.”

“All right. Yeah. Bye.” 

And Ronan hung up. 

Then he went straight upstairs, locked himself in his bedroom, and did not emerge until lunchtime. 

:::

Just because he and Gansey were doing whatever they were doing did not mean that Ronan suddenly became a phone person. But he definitely had a new appreciation for the stupid little thing. 

They didn't talk on the phone much, but they texted almost constantly, Ronan sending Gansey orders of things to eat, Gansey sending back pictorial evidence: snapshots of empty takeout boxes, images of extravagent receipts, and best of all, pictures of himself. Pictures of him in bed covered with Chipotle wrappers, his belly rising like a pale island from the sea of blankets, his face pudgy and pleased. Pictures taken sneakily in restaurant bathrooms, evidence of $200 steaks and way too many appetizers obvious in the taut slope of his belly under a new button-up. Pictures from odd angles taken as he sat in class: his round tummy sitting pretty on a pair of chunky thighs, or a frontal shot of his belly button looking wide and soft through the fabric of a new polo. 

“Who are you texting all the time?” Blue asked curiously. She was visiting for the weekend and she and Calla had come to the Barns for dinner. Opal had taken Calla on a tour of a bee's nest she'd found in the attic, so it was just him and Blue lounging around the living room. 

“Gansey,” Ronan said, admiring a shot of Gansey's new khakis unbuttoned around the swell of his stomach. 

“What about?”

“How fat he's gotten,” Ronan said, turning his phone off. He looked up to gauge  
her reaction. 

“Oh god,” she giggled. “Adam and I were just talking about that. He really has put on a lot of weight, huh? I saw a picture someone posted of him on Instagram a few weeks ago.”

“I think he looks good,” Ronan said.

“Well, he certainly looks big,” Blue said, then gave him a considering look. “I guess some people like that.”

“Some people probably do,” Ronan said blandly. “Not everyone wants to date a midget. You're lucky Parrish has a fetish for dwarves.”

Blue made her best face of outraged disapproval, and he added, “Sorry. I mean little people.”

“You are such a dick-wrinkle,” she said.

“Oh,” Ronan said, perking up. “I like that one. Did you learn it in college?”

“Yeah, along with this,” Blue said, and punched him in the arm with her sharp little knuckles. Everything below the elbow went slightly numb.

“That actually fucking hurt,” he said, rubbing it.

“I'm taking self-defense,” she said. 

“Nice, Sargent,” he said approvingly. 

“You're so annoying. It's impossible to piss you off on purpose.”

“At least I'm not short.”

Ronan and Gansey would only be in DC for five nights, but Ronan felt like he was preparing to go into battle forever and maybe never come out. Gansey was increasingly nervous, made more so by his early April appointment with the nutritionist.

“Well,” he said over the phone, clearly going for breezy, “since you left in February I've somehow managed to add another twenty-three pounds, which means I've gained over forty pounds since my mother panicked over the forty pounds I'd gained four months ago, which means I've gained eighty pounds since starting college, which means... well, it means I'm looking pretty damn big, and I think she might notice. Also, the nutritionist is going to call her tomorrow morning. I've been practicing sucking in my belly but I think my abs might've gone on vacation.”

“Eighty pounds,” Ronan said, stuck on that detail. “How much do you weigh?”

“257,” Gansey said. “And there's still a week left til Easter. Given the rate I'm going, I'll probably be 260 by then.”

“That's not that much,” Ronan tried.

“Ronan, I'm six feet tall. Going by my BMI, I'm officially obese.”

“That thing's outdated, you said.”

Gansey made an exasperated noise. “You're being unhelpful.”

“What do you want me to say?” Ronan said. “Look, your mom's gonna freak, yeah. But it doesn't fucking matter, she'll get over it. God, you've got a 4.0 at Harvard, for fucksake. She has nothing to bitch about – and if she complains, that's her shit, Gansey, not yours.”

“I know,” Gansey said quietly, and let out a tired sigh. 

“Look, call me after you two talk tomorrow,” Ronan said. “In the meantime, go eat a couple lobster rolls. Really expensive ones, with some fried oysters on the side.”

“There's a place nearby where they're $35 a roll, can you believe it?” Gansey said. “They claim there's a whole lobster's worth of meat in there.”

“Perfect,” Ronan said. “Don't forget to ask for extra butter.”

When they hung up Gansey sounded markedly more cheerful, but when he called the next afternoon, his voice was like a funeral dirge. 

“Well,” Gansey said. “That was the worst conversation of my life.”

Ronan had been on the roof unclogging a gutter, but he stopped and sat back when he'd heard his phone ring. He looked out over the green expanse of the Barns, misty in the damp afternoon, and sighed. 

“Shit,” he said. 

“She tried the health angle for a minute, but the nutritionist, thank god, told her explicitly that my bloodwork was perfectly healthy, so she couldn't use that for long, and then she switched to politics, like I knew she would. It's bad for her image, she said, to be seen with...” He paused. “I believe the word was slovenly. A slovenly son. She said it made me look stupid and lazy and --”

“You have a 4.0 at Harvard,” Ronan repeated, furious. “Stupid? You're the smartest damn person in your family. And you're not lazy, you work harder than anyone I know.”

“I happen to be in a taxi right now because I couldn't be bothered to walk six blocks,” Gansey said.

“That's a different kind of lazy,” Ronan said. “Christ, what a... You know what, we should sic Blue on your mother. She'd give her a rant about, I don't know, feminism and classist snob shit and stereotypes and body politics and fat positivity and – jesus, she's rubbing off on me.”

Gansey laughed, but it was weak. “She's going to be watching me like a hawk over Easter,” he said. “I'm going to starve.”

“I don't think you're in danger of that,” said Ronan. “But I'll bring a suitcase full of snacks, just in case.” 

This got a more genuine laugh. “Just knowing you'll be there makes me feel better.”

But Gansey's anxieties couldn't help rub off on Ronan. He found himself on the internet at 3am, googling shit like “What to say to fat-shaming relatives,” and “How to get your mom to stop talking about your weight,” and ended up in an internet rabbit hole reading about how girth had once been a sign of wealth and prestige. He sent Gansey a few pictures of some very rotund kings, with the text, “Tell your mom politicians have been overeating since the dawn of fucking time.”

Then, after some consideration, “I bet Jesus was fat.”

“Ronan!” Gansey wrote back. “That's the most sacreligious thing you've ever said.”

“What, that Jesus was fat, or that he was a politician?”

“The first one. Both. I don't know, I'm too scandilized to think.”

Ronan was due to go to DC two days before Easter, dropping Opal at Fox Way and then picking Gansey up at the airport on his way into the city. He did pack a suitcase full of snacks, because it was funny, and because it was hot, and he filled it with slim jims and Doritos and potato chips and Cheez-its and Oreos and generally the entire junk food aisle of the supermarket. On top of that he threw two sleeveless t-shirts and a decent button-up and tie for Easter mass, then, grudgingly, his nice suit, because it would throw off Declan and force him to think of a different argument to pick. 

For the drive he wore his customary black jeans and black jacket, noticing as he zipped his pants that they were feeling a little looser on him than they had been. All the farm prep he had to do for spring kept him active, and he was often too tired to eat more than a sandwich for lunch and a stir-fry for dinner, so he'd dropped some weight. The contrast between his lifestyle and Gansey's sent a tingle of pleasure through him. While he was working the fields and skipping breakfast, Gansey was lying in bed eating donuts and reading books. 

At the airport, he parked the car and walked to meet Gansey at baggage claim instead of idling outside waiting in the car as he usually did. He wanted to be standing upright and ready when he saw Gansey for the first time, because things had changed between them and he wasn't certain how it would play out in real life. He felt better, safer, on his feet. 

He was a little early, so he paced around baggage claim, then climbed up and down a flight of stairs, filled with a frantic, nervous, excited energy. People from Gansey's flight were starting to fill the claim area, and he rocked back and forth on his toes, looking, waiting, and when finally he caught sight of Gansey his heart gave a wild leap and he started forward, then stopped. 

It was a pleasure to watch Gansey before he noticed he was being watched. He was in a pair of khakis and a light pink button-up that only strained a little around his middle, and the weight he'd put on since Ronan had visited was even more apparent here than it was in photos. The button-up was tucked in, so Ronan could perfectly follow the fat round curve of Gansey's underbelly, how it seemed poised to start hanging but hadn't quite succumbed to gravity. He admired the gorgeous broad reach of Gansey's shoulders and the way Gansey's hips had thickened, and licked his lips when Gansey turned around, smitten with how wide his ass was getting, how it curved sensually out from his spine – and he realized with a pang of desire that Gansey was standing slightly sway-backed, feet planted apart to accommodate the heavy belly he'd added so quickly, and even as he watched Gansey put a thoughtless hand to the side of his stomach as if he was bracing it. 

Then Gansey saw him, and his handsome face lit up like the morning sky. 

Ronan waited, letting Gansey come to him, noticing how Gansey's gait had changed, his thick thighs kissing, and he noticed too that even though Gansey was looking at him head-on his chin had a slight, soft double starting beneath it. He was transfixed by this, and when Gansey was in front of him, he found himself speechless.

“Hi,” said Gansey. 

“Hi,” Ronan managed. 

Then, as naturally as if they'd been doing it all their lives, Gansey leaned forward so his belly bumped Ronan's flat torso, and kissed him.

Ronan thought maybe it was supposed to be a gentle kiss, almost chaste, but the second their lips touched he felt a roaring flame inside of him, and he grabbed Gansey around his thick waist and pulled him close, pressing himself against every one of Gansey's new pounds, and Gansey had a wide hand on the back of Ronan's neck and was kissing him so fiercely that Ronan felt like he was nothing but a mouth atop a white-hot blaze of desire, almost bodiless, free-falling, and Gansey was gasping into his mouth and pulling away and Ronan wasn't ready yet, chasing his lips and reeling him back in, and finally, an eternity later, they broke apart, both of them panting and flushed, their pupils blown, Gansey's arms linked over Ronan's shoulders and Ronan's hands on the round fat swell of Gansey's hips, thumbs nestled in the roll he'd found there. 

“My god,” Gansey said. “I think I'm seeing stars.”

Ronan touched his mouth. He had no words. 

“Oh,” said Gansey. “There's my bag.”

Ronan turned. “I'll get it for you,” he said. “Which is it?”

It was, of course, the most expensive suitcase on the moving console, and Ronan wheeled it behind them as he led Gansey to the car. Somehow Gansey's hand had found his, and he could not believe his own luck, walking hand-in-hand with the hottest boy he'd ever seen, the boy he'd loved uselessly for so long, listening as Gansey's breath sped up slightly as they walked up a ramp, loving how Gansey was flushed and a little breathless just from the short walk across the parking garage. 

Gansey fell into the passenger seat with a thump that shook the whole car, too unused to his weight to have learned grace yet, and he buckled his seatbelt carefully, the straps bracketing the round swell of his tummy where it settled on his lap. As Ronan started the car he fiddled with the seat adjustments, reclining a bit and resting a fist lightly on the crest of his gut. 

“Here we go,” he said. “Are you ready for this? My mother just texted to say she had a special low-calorie meal prepared for me for dinner this evening.”

“Look in the backseat,” Ronan said. 

Gansey tried to swivel, but to Ronan's delight his belly got in the way, and he had to rise off his seat a little with a grunt in order to get the big, square white box Ronan had laid out. 

“What's this?” he said, and opened it. “Oh my,” he said. 

It was a cake – a very expensive one that Ronan had special-ordered, two tiers of ganache and buttercream frosting with beautifully-piped letters that read “FUCK DIETS.” It had cost over a hundred dollars. 

“There's a fork in the glove box,” Ronan said. “Your parents house is forty minutes away.”

Gansey looked truly intimidated. “We might have to drive around the block a few times.”

“You live in a gated community. There is no block to drive around. Start eating.”

Gansey was already fetching the fork from the glove box and digging in. “This is spectacular,” he said, words thick with frosting. “I wish I'd known. I had breakfast on the plane. Well, second breakfast, I stopped for pancakes this morning. Anyway,” he took another enormous bite, “first class food is going downhill. Dry croissants, terrible yogurt, and I had to ask twice for more of those tiny pats of butter. This is so much better.”

“You're going to have to eat faster than that,” Ronan said. “I know fast isn't exactly your strong suit.”

“Talk to me,” Gansey said. “How's the farm? How's Opal?”

“We talk all the time,” Ronan said, but he began filling Gansey in, telling him about the new lambs and the crops he was planting and how Opal was suddenly obsessed with birdwatching and had begun keeping a notebook tallying what she'd seen, and Gansey listened eagerly and laughed in the right places and put bite after bite of cake into his mouth, until his laughter was breathless and pained and he was breathing noisily through his mouth and he was uttering little grunts of concentration. 

Ronan glanced over as often as he dared. Gansey had reclined the seat further back and pulled the cake box up to rest against the shelf of his belly, and his face was practically buried in it. Somehow he'd gotten frosting on his cheek, and Ronan reached over and swiped it up with one finger, then licked it off. Yum. 

“This might be, a bit much for me to handle,” Gansey said, voice strained. “Fair warning.”

“Eat faster, then,” Ronan said. 

“I'm getting extremely full,” Gansey said, mouth full. “It's very rich.”

“You're very rich,” Ronan said. “You can buy a new stomach if this one starts hurting.”

“Ha! Oh, ow, don't make me laugh, this one's already hurting. Oof, I'm so tight. I had a box of Cheez-its on the plane, too, I forgot to mention.”

“A whole box?”

“Mm. They're so addictive.” His mouth was still full, and when Ronan glanced over, he was adding more cake to a bite he hadn't yet swallowed. “This shirt's already getting snug. I should've gotten a size up, but,” he swallowed with difficulty and shoved more cake into his mouth, “it's true I can get another whenever I want. I might have to unbutton it, just for the car ride. You don't mind, do you?”

“Why would I fucking mind?”

Gansey had settled the cake box on his lap and was struggling to untuck his shirt, face pink, but the waistband of his pants were so tight he couldn't tug it it out. He gave up and began unbuttoning it without untucking it, revealing the round globe of his full belly in a tight white t-shirt that beautifully displayed how deep his belly button was getting, and he tugged the sides of his shirt away as best he could so his gut was framed like a painting. Ronan reached over and set a hand on it, feeling how bloated he was but how soft, too, and he petted the stretched skin around Gansey's belly-button with reverence, liking how it quivered when they went over a bump in the road. He could feel the plush layer of fat jiggle, but beneath it Gansey was taut and firm. 

“Oh, that feels good,” Gansey said. Under his hand, Ronan could feel how strained Gansey's breathing was, how he couldn't pull enough air into his lungs because of the press of his belly, and he kept his hand there as Gansey began eating cake again, feeling the jolt and lurch as Gansey hiccupped and sighed. 

Traffic got heavy, and he reluctantly removed his hand, instead listening happily as Gansey burped and murmured to himself. 

“God,” Gansey mumbled around cake. “I'm going to pop one of these days. I can't believe how heavy I'm getting.”

“Fifteen minutes away,” Ronan said. “You gonna make it?”

“I'm done,” Gansey said, and Ronan swiveled his head so fast he got a crick in his neck. Sure enough, the box was empty. There was frosting on Gansey's fingers and chocolate in his teeth, and he was trying to recline the chair as far down as it would go, writhing like a beetle on his back and trying to heave around so he was on his side, which was impossible in the car seat. He was misted with sweat and his mouth hung open, breath noisy and harsh. 

“Holy shit. I have never seen you eat that fast.”

“Don't talk to me,” Gansey said, eyes shut. “Give me... god, give me a minute.”

Ronan abruptly swerved into the parking lot of a gas station, and Gansey blinked his eyes open again. 

“What,” he said, but stopped, because Ronan was leaning over the gearshift to stroke the hugely swollen jut of Gansey's belly, digging his fingers into the flesh like he was giving a massage, and Gansey's head tilted back, the soft pouch of skin beneath his chin perfectly poised for Ronan's mouth, so he leaned even further and sucked a mouthful of soft jawline, then trailed further downward and nibbled the slight crease where Gansey's neck met his collarbone. Gansey was soft, soft, soft, softer than anything Ronan could've dreamed up. “Oh god,” Gansey was groaning. “God, that feels good. Oh, you weren't kidding about --” he paused to breathe and let out a few pained burps. “You weren't kidding about, biting me.”

Ronan ignored him in favor of setting his teeth to the place one of his hands had been, biting gently through Gansey's t-shirt and leaving the wet mark of his mouth on the fabric. He'd like to mark Gansey up like this for real, leave hickeys all over his soft, bloated body. He went back to rubbing, Gansey's eyes fluttering in his head, and he kept up a steady, soothing series of soft touches and firm strokes until Gansey's breathing became even, though still shallow, and his eyes were closed. He was puffing a little for air, even in sleep, his own arms splayed at his sides, and Ronan carefully pulled away.

He let Gansey sleep for half an hour, his reward, and then he shook him awake.

Gansey came to with a low moan of pure discomfort, and he wrapped his arms around his fat tummy and tried again to turn onto his side. “Five more minutes,” he said.

“Your mother's waiting,” Ronan said, and that got Gansey's attention. He struggled to sit upright, moving the chairback up in slow degrees until his belly was sitting in his lap again and he looked crowded and hot and beautiful. “Button your shirt,” said Ronan.

“I can't,” Gansey said. “I'd have to suck in, and I can't do that.”

He looked utterly defeated, and Ronan turned with a falsely put-upon sigh and reached for the sides of Gansey's shirt. He had to push in on the stretched swell of his bloated stomach to get the buttons done, Gansey groaning and belching helplessly, but he managed to get it fastened. The entire act gave him no end of delight. 

He patted Gansey's gut and said, “Okay. Give me your best I-didn't-just-eat-a-whole-cake face.”

Gansey, because he was the son of politicians and a freak of nature in the charm department, immediately morphed his face into a sunny smile. He looked so perfectly at-ease that Ronan gaped and said, “Now stop. That's fucking creepy.”

Gansey's face relaxed back into the taut lines of discomfort, and Ronan gave in to instinct and leaned to press a kiss to the edge of Gansey's mouth. Gansey turned into it, his mouth hot and very sweet from all the cake, and Ronan laid a hand on his belly, patting gently. Then he pulled away, and started the car. 

:::

The Gansey mansion was as Ronan remembered it: enormous, perfectly-appointed and decorated with exquisite taste, and, most impressively of all, always just the right temperature. He drove the BMW into a huge garage filled with a stunning array of classic cars, Gansey grim and anxious, and he went around to fetch their bags while Gansey neatened himself up in the rearview mirror and hauled himself out of the car with a groan. 

It was amazing what a whole cake could do to someone, Ronan thought, especially on top of two breakfasts. Gansey's shirt, which in the airport had looked just a teensy bit snug, was now more obviously on its way to being outgrown, and his belly looked rounder and more pronounced, swelling out from under his pecs like a doughy beach ball. He tugged his khakis down more firmly under the curve of his gut, then reached for his bag. 

“I got it,” Ronan said.

“No, let me,” Gansey said. “How will it look to my mother if I let you carry both bags? Lazy.”

“Suit yourself,” Ronan said darkly, watching as Gansey started dragging his wheeled bag out the door and up the long drive. It was warm for early April, and the bag was heavy, and Gansey's cheeks immediately began to grow pink. There was a long, shallow flight of stairs leading to the front door, and Gansey paused at the bottom, already out of breath. He looked at Ronan, and Ronan, rolling his eyes, grabbed Gansey's bag and easily hauled both of them up, Gansey plodding more slowly behind him. 

At the top, Gansey waited a moment for his air to even out, then leaned towards the doorbell speaker and said, “It's me. Let us in.”

A moment later the door swung open, and Helen Gansey stood before them with her hand on her cocked hip. She looked beautiful and intimidating as always, very tall and thin and put-together, and her face betrayed nothing as she raked her eyes up and down her little brother's body, and then up and down again. 

Finally she said, “You weren't kidding.”

“No, I wasn't,” Gansey said. 

“God, look at you,” Helen said. “Look at that gut. Hi, Ronan. Dick, turn around.”

Wearily, Gansey plodded in a circle, and she let out a low whistle. 

“At least some of it went to your ass,” she said. “Not half bad. My god. I never thought I'd see the day. You've gotten so round.”

“You promised me you'd be on my side,” Gansey started, and Helen flapped an impatient hand at him. 

“Give me a minute to process, Jesus,” Helen said. “I've got your back, I'm just taking a second to fully come to terms with how wide that back has gotten. How on earth did this happen?”

“You sound like Mother,” Gansey said. “How do you think it happened? I've been eating. Too much. For a while.”

Helen shook her head, then said, “Welcome to the lion's den. I'll do what I can, but you're in for it, pal.”

Gansey gave Ronan a resigned, desperate look, and in they went.

Mr. and Mrs. Gansey were having cocktails in the parlor – the front parlor, as opposed to the side parlor or the back parlor, and they were arranged on their perfectly-upholstered luxuriously firm couches as if posed for a painting: Mr. Gansey with a beautifully-shod foot on his suited knee and a crystal glass of something dark in one hand, Mrs. Gansey with her elbow elegantly set on a carved wooden armrest and her head thrown back as if inviting the world to admire her patrician nose and the lovely line of her neck. 

They both looked up when Helen entered with the boys in tow, and then Mrs. Gansey stood, her mouth dramatically agape. 

“Dick's put on some weight,” Helen said, breezing through to retrieve her drink from atop a piano. “Let's make our obligatory fuss and get over it quickly, okay?”

“ _Some_ weight?” Mrs. Gansey repeated. “No. No, this is not _some_ weight. This is quite a _lot_ of weight. James, take the boys' bags to their rooms.”

A butler appeared out of nowhere and whisked their bags away, and Ronan jammed his hands in his pockets, jaw tight, as Mrs. Gansey began circling Gansey like a prowling cat. 

“The nutritionist told me, but I could scarcely believe it,” she said. 

“Well, believe it,” Gansey said. He crossed his arms, trying to hide, but the pose only succeeded in showing off the way he now had to rest his arms atop his belly to achieve it. 

“Come on, now,” Mr. Gansey called. “Let them come in and sit down before you start haranguing him. James, get them a few Cokes.”

“Diet Cokes!” Mrs. Gansey said. “Oh, Dick, how could you let this happen?”

“I was busy with other things,” Gansey said. “Like Harvard.” He sat down on the couch near his father, and Ronan could see how carefully he was moving, trying to be graceful, but he was still enormously full and he uttered a helpless little “Oof” as he situated himself, the buttons of his shirt straining even further.

Mr. Gansey said nothing, but Ronan saw his brow furrow briefly, eyes tracking the hand Gansey draped over his gut out of habit. 

“Well, you won't be busy here,” Mrs. Gansey said. “I've notified the cook, and she's preparing plenty of healthy, low-calorie meals to get you on the right track. The nutritionist seems to think you're not interested in losing the weight, but you can't be comfortable like this, can you?”

“I'm perfectly comfortable,” Gansey said, doing a very good impression of a comfortable person. 

“Impossible,” Mrs. Gansey said. “Gaining eighty pounds in less than a year is an enormous strain on your frame. Look how you're arching your back.”

It was true that Gansey had developed a habit of leaning back into an arch, trying to adjust the weight of his belly in his lap, and he immediately stopped. 

“Now look how you're slumping!”

“Do we have to talk about it?” Gansey begged. “Can't I just start the diet in peace?”

“He's got a point,” Mr. Gansey said. “Talking about it doesn't do anyone any good, least of all me. I'm quite bored.” 

Gansey shot him a grateful smile. 

“Me too,” yawned Helen. “Why don't we let them get settled before we yell at one another in front of our guest.”

Everyone looked to Ronan, who scowled with an intensity usually reserved only for anything related to Aglionby. 

“Dick is quite settled enough,” Mrs. Gansey said. 

“Mother!” said Helen.

Briefly, Ronan wondered why the hell he'd allowed himself to get roped into this shit-show of a family holiday, but then he glanced at Gansey, pink-cheeked and unhappy and still so full that Ronan could see the jump of his belly as he tried not to belch aloud, and Gansey looked back. When he met Ronan's eyes he gave a small, real smile, and Ronan remembered again why he was here. 

For Gansey, there was very little he wouldn't do. 

:::

Somehow, they made it through five days in DC. 

At first there was nothing to do but play along with his mother's schemes, so for the first day Gansey choked down the egg whites and unsalted greens and boiled chicken breasts his mother forced on him, watching jealously as the rest of his family enjoyed tenderloin and buttery omelettes, and despite Ronan's suitcase full of snacks Gansey found himself re-acquainted with hunger for the first time in months.

It didn't sit well with him. His stomach was used to being filled – overfilled, really – many times a day, and it growled and complained near-ceaselessly. He was grumpy and distractable, and found himself thinking of food nearly all day, imagining what he'd eat when he was free again, crunching down bags of Doritos in his bedroom and trying desperately to fill the hollowness, so sharp it nearly made him nauseous at times. But bagged junk food wasn't real food, at least not in a way that registered, and all he wanted was to tuck in to something hot and greasy and eat until he ached. 

It was odd, but waking up empty in the morning drove home his gain in a way that surprised him. He was used to waking up and immediately putting something in his belly, whether it was a quick piece of cold pizza or a couple cupcakes to tide him over as he walked to the dining hall, he always started eating within minutes of waking up and so his belly didn't have much time to unbloat. Because of this, he hadn't quite realized how soft he'd gotten. 

In his parent's house, he woke up empty, and didn't have a chance to try and fill himself until after breakfast, when he'd escaped and gorged himself on Cheetos and cheesy popcorn from Ronan's stash, and even then he didn't get stuffed tight. He was surprised to learn that his belly was getting quite doughy, the underbelly soft and roundly swelling, and when he was empty he detected a slight roll forming above his belly button, where his upper stomach was usually firm and hard with food. Even his back and sides seemed softer without the hugely bloated fullness of his stomach pulling at them. 

The second day was Easter, and it was hellish, but at least he was well-fed. Ronan went to mass with his brothers, and Gansey was left for a few hours alone at his family's annual Easter party, enduring endless passive-aggressive comments from relatives and family friends. There was as always a huge buffet table full of food, and his mother couldn't stand behind him for the whole party hissing about healthy choices, and so he managed to fill a few plates full of roasted lamb and buttery potatoes and bolt them down, all the while forced to listen to horrible small-talk and insipid comments about the “American worker.”

Ronan was due to return around 1, and once he'd eaten a few plates worth of food Gansey wandered out into the garden to wait for him, installing himself on a quiet corner bench with a stack of cookies he'd managed to pilfer, feeling full for the first time since eating the cake in the car with Ronan, though not by any means stuffed. No sooner had he finished the cookies then Helen found him. 

“I've been looking for you!” she said, as he brushed crumbs from his shirt. In one hand she held a plate with something delicious-smelling and oozy on it, and in the other hand, a baguette. “Here,” she said. “You're probably hungry after a day of chicken feed.”

“What is this?” Gansey said, accepting the plate. It looked to be some kind of pie, in a flaky crust. 

“A wheel of baked brie with caramelized onions,” she said, flipping off one incredibly high heel and flexing her toes briefly before slipping it back on. 

“An entire wheel of brie?” he said, ripping off a piece of baguette and loading it with the buttery crust and rich, goopy cheese. “God that's good.”

She gave him an impatient look. “You don't have to eat the whole thing. Probably you shouldn't. I snagged it from the kitchen on its way out.”

He nodded his thanks, already helping himself to more with greedy, eager hands, and she rolled her eyes.

“And here I thought you were into Ronan,” she said. “But no, it turns out you're not bisexual, you're briesexual.”

He swallowed. “No, you're right,” he said. “I am into Ronan.” 

“Knew it!” Helen crowed. “And what does Ronan think about this?” She delivered a gentle pat to his belly, surprising him. 

“Um,” said Gansey. “He. Doesn't mind.”

“I expect you're practicing the fine art of understatement,” Helen said. “But it's none of my business.”

They sat in companionable silence for a while, Gansey piling brie and crust onto pieces of baguette and Helen sitting with her eyes half-closed in the April sun. Eventually Helen stood and said, “You're not actually going to eat all of that in one sitting, are you?”

Gansey gave her a guilty look and burped quietly into a fist. The food was already half-gone.

“You are,” Helen said. “Well, I guess a person doesn't get fat on air. Enjoy it.” She stood and stretched. “When your chubby-chasing boy toy gets back, I'll send him here to find you. Wish me luck in there.”

“Good luck,” Gansey said. “And thank you.”

With a flip of her hair, she was gone, and Gansey was free to focus his attention on the excellent snack she'd brought him. He was so focused on how delicious it was and how good it felt to finally relax and eat past the point of comfort that he didn't notice Ronan had come into the garden until he felt a shadow fall on him. 

Maybe Gansey would always be a snob at heart, but there was something about Ronan in a suit that absolutely slayed him. He looked even more dangerous in a crooked tie than he did in a ripped muscle tee, his suit jacket slung over one shoulder, the tiny black edge of a tattoo poking up past his collar, suit pants falling over black workboots. 

“What've you got there?” Ronan said, and sat beside Gansey on the stone bench. He sat very close, their shoulders touching, and Gansey could smell frankincense and mhyrr on him, the holy perfume of mass. 

“Baked brie,” Gansey said. “And a baguette, courtesy of Helen.”

Ronan leaned over and took a delicate nibble of his jaw, sucking a pudgy mouthful of flesh, and heat flooded Gansey's body from the contact. “Is it good?” Ronan said, breath hot on Gansey's neck.

“Very,” Gansey said. 

“Don't mind me,” Ronan said, leaning back and throwing an arm across the back of the bench. “Keep eating.”

So he did, until the plate was licked clean and the only thing left of the baguette was a crumb or two decorating the crest of Gansey's full belly. Gansey put the plate aside with a hard sigh, relishing the familiar throb of a tummy stretched to capacity and then some, and Ronan scooted a bit closer and lay a hand over Gansey's belly button, scratching gently like he knew Gansey loved. 

“I stopped at the grocery store on the way home from mass,” Ronan said in Gansey's ear, and Gansey shivered. Ronan nosed at his jaw, then kissed his way over to Gansey's mouth, his hand still keeping up its marvelous rhythm on Gansey's full gut, and he melted into the sensations, Ronan's mouth on his, his strong hand stroking the stretched skin, his belly distended with three plates of lamb and seven chocolate chip cookies and a wheel of brie baked in pie crust and a baguette. 

“What'd you get,” Gansey said when they broke apart, and Ronan took a handful of Gansey's fat hip and squeezed.

“A couple cherry pies,” Ronan said. “Some chocolate muffins. A vanilla sheet cake. Two cheesecakes. A coffee cake. A dozen donuts. Some kind of sticky cinnamon log thing with nuts.”

“Jesus,” Gansey said. 

“Should tide you over for the next three days,” Ronan said. “Make up for all that fucking diet shit.”

“Why only pastries?”

Ronan shrugged, fingers still idly stroking up and down the hot curve of Gansey's stomach. “I like when you eat pastries. Don't know why. You mind?”

“Not at all,” Gansey said. “I like when I eat pastries, too.” He yawned, which turned into a little hiccup. “That might be a tad excessive, though, even for me.”

“I've thought it out. A pie tonight,” Ronan said, counting on his fingers. “A pie before breakfast tomorrow. A muffins for a snack. Another muffin after whatever the fuck your mom feeds you for lunch. A cheesecake after dinner. Day two, another cheesecake before breakfast, the donuts for snacks and after lunch, and the sheet cake after dinner. Day three, a coffee cake for breakfast, and then the rest of the muffins and the cinnamon log thing the rest of the day. Boom, easy.”

“You want me to eat an entire pie before breakfast.”

“That's day one. Day two you've gotta eat a cheesecake.”

“Ronan...”

“Think how pissed your mom'll be if you leave looking even bigger than when you came,” Ronan said. 

Gansey was not in the habit of trying to piss of hiss mother, but he had to admit there was a certain appeal to this idea. “I'll try,” he said. 

“That's the spirit,” Ronan said.

:::

The plan was a success.

That night, after the party had been cleaned up and everyone had gone home, Ronan and Gansey went up to Gansey's bedroom and locked the door. Ronan had stolen a bottle of champagne, and he poured them each a glass as Gansey made himself comfortable on the bed and attended to his first cherry pie. It took an hour or so, but though he was painfully full and headachy from the sugar when he was finished, it was not hard going. Not with Ronan there to wrap an arm around him and pet the stretched-tight skin while he ate, pushing up Gansey's t-shirt and sucking kisses into the heavy flesh of Gansey's tummy, nuzzling his fat pecs where they had started sitting on his stomach and whispering encouragements into Gansey's ear. 

Gansey fell asleep with Ronan wrapped around him, Ronan's hand firmly gripping the aching ball of his belly, Ronan's breath ruffling Gansey's hair. Ronan was all hard lines and muscle, his biceps big from farm labor and his torso flat and strong, and next to him Gansey felt soft and weak and protected. 

He woke the next morning to a shaft of sun on his face, and he stretched languidly, scratching the overstretched skin of his tummy and relishing the feeling of lingering bloat from the night before. 

“Look what I dreamed you,” Ronan said, and produced a beautiful gold fork with scrollwork that spelled out GANSEY. “Ready for a pie?”

“Ready,” Gansey said, and it was like a dream itself, as if he'd never slept at all, picking up right from the previous night with the same oversweet taste of cherries and thick buttery crust, the same growing ache in his belly, Ronan still right there to soothe his stuffed body and tell him what a good job he was doing, and then, when Gansey was too lazy and dazed and out of breath to finish getting dressed by himself, he wrestled him into a button-up and got it snugly fastened. 

“By the time we leave, this isn't going to fit at all,” Ronan promised. 

It was a punishing schedule of sugar and fat, and Gansey floated through the next three days on a tide of pain and pleasure. He found that when he was stuffed full of an entire cheesecake before 8am, he didn't really mind his mother's pointed comments about how red-faced and breathless he got when he dropped his coffee spoon and had to bend over to get it, or how slowly he climbed the stairs, or how he spread his legs to make room for the belly on his lap. He was too busy choking down the two boiled eggs she was allowing him for breakfast and kneading his packed stomach under the table to feel badly about anything. 

“Yes, mother,” Gansey said at afternoon tea, nearly stoned from the dozen donuts he'd had since the cheesecake, plus a pretty decent turkey sandwich at lunch. “I know I walk differently. I've gained eighty pounds, as you so love to point out. Of course I walk differently.”

Next to him, Ronan's shoulders stiffened, and his father let out an irritated sigh – at his mother, Gansey realized, not at him, which emboldened him somewhat. 

Undeterred, his mother continued, “It's just that big belly, Dick, it's so awful for your back.”

Gansey was squirming around the weight of said belly, trying to get comfortable, though it was a losing battle when he was this full. He wrapped an arm around it, a habit to try and take some pressure off, and said, “You're right, mother, my back has been hurting.”

A bit put-out by his agreement, she said, “And your knees.”

“Right,” Gansey said. “It's not as pleasant to stand for long periods of time, not at all. In fact, I prefer to be seated whenever possible.”

“And your --”

“Mother,” Gansey said, his stomach packed so tightly there was no room in him for patience. “I know. I understand. You're right. You're right about everything. Can we leave it, please?”

“He's following your diet,” his father put in. “Stop harping on him.”

Gansey allowed himself a small belch. “Yes, I'm eating what you tell me to,” he said, which was not untrue; he just also happened to be eating the bakery section of a grocery store, and he studiously did not look at Ronan. “What more do you want from me?”

“I want you to show a little remorse!”

That was it. The last straw. Gansey braced himself against the arm of his chair and pushed to his feet, belly churning in protest, and for once he didn't care that his mother saw him put a soothing hand to its tight side. “I'm going to have a nap,” he said. “Because, yes, I'm fat and lazy, and I have the audacity to be happy instead of remorseful. Coming, Ronan?”

Ronan stood, looking as pleased as someone could look while still glaring daggers, and Gansey left his mother sitting there looking both astonished and a bit ashamed.

“Fuck yeah,” Ronan said quietly as he followed Gansey up the stairs. 

“I shouldn't have gotten angry,” Gansey said, gripping the railing. 

“Yes you should have,” Ronan said. “She deserved a hell of a lot more than what you gave her.”

Gansey didn't answer, because his anger had propelled him very quickly up the first half of the staircase, and now he was feeling a bit out of breath. He was also feeling obscurely proud. It had been a long time since he'd stood up to his mother; and been a long time coming. 

In his room he collapsed on the bed, breathing heavily.

“God, she's right about one thing,” he said. “I'm quite out of shape.”

Ronan knelt beside him on the bed and began unbuttoning his overshirt, then undid the the button of his khakis, knuckling the fat swell of Gansey's lower belly. He dropped a kiss to the stretched skin next to Gansey's navel. “Better?”

“Much. Thank you.” He yawned, and stretched, and Ronan turned to remove his shoes for him. When he was finished, Gansey tried to reach for him, wanting to hook his fingers in Ronan's belt loops and reel him down, but he found that his abs weren't quite up to the challenge of folding him upwards even an inch, so he dropped his outstretched hand, defeated. “Ronan, come here.”

Ronan came willingly, leaning down to be kissed, one strong arm bracketing Gansey's head while his free hand cupped one of Gansey's round pecs, casually thumbing the nipple. Gansey sighed, his toes curling of their own accord. 

“Admit it,” Ronan murmured against Gansey's mouth. “You like pissing off your mom. You like being so big nobody can believe it.”

“Yes,” Gansey said. “Yes, I do. Oh that feels good. Please don't stop.”

They made out for a long while, and then, when Gansey was feeing a bit more up to movement, they got each other off, Ronan taking his slow, sweet time with Gansey and then Gansey bringing Ronan to the brink in minutes and then keeping him there until Ronan was punching his pillow in frustration. They'd learned quickly how the other liked it. 

After daytime sex, Ronan was always energized, full of vigor, while Gansey was overcome with sleepy languor. Ronan played with Gansey's belly-button and kissed Gansey's neck and chewed gently on his earlobe until Gansey, already half-asleep, said, “Ronan, go take a walk.”

Ronan didn't need to be told twice. He leaped to his feet and strode around the room putting his flung-about clothes back on, his eyes bright with satisfaction. 

Then, because it needed saying, Gansey said, “I don't like being nagged by my mother.”

“I know that,” Ronan said. 

“I want her to stop.”

“Duh.”

“But I also... I also... What you said, earlier. I like how they look at me. And I hate it. Am I crazy?”

“No,” Ronan said, and leaned down to deliver a ringing kiss to Gansey's tummy. “You're fucking kinky.”

“If you weren't here, I don't think I'd like it at all. But with you watching, it's... Well, it's embarrassing. And it's hot. It's confusing.”

“Sex is weird,” Ronan said, shrugging. “I mean, Jesus, Gansey, I've started popping wood when I even _see_ a cake. So who's the freak?”

“Both of us, I guess.”

Ronan sat on the side of the bed and kissed Gansey's mouth. “Luckily,” he said. 

“Okay. Take your walk. Get your exercise. I'll probably still be in bed when you get back.”

Ronan gave him a hungry, delighted look, and left. 

Gansey heaved himself onto his side and wrapped an arm around his belly, and fell fast asleep.

He woke what seemed only moments later to Ronan settling in beside him, and he turned enough to see his handsome face and grinning mouth. 

“You weren't lying,” Ronan said. “Here you are. You've been sleeping almost four hours – you slept through dinner, which is too bad, because your mother had the cook prepare a delicious breast of unseasoned chicken for you. What's the status in here?” He palmed Gansey's belly. 

“Bloated,” Gansey yawned, and pressed tentative fingers into it. “Tender.”

“Ready for cake, then,” Ronan said. “No, don't move. I'm going to feed it to you.”

Gansey was suddenly very, very awake. 

They ended up with Gansey between Ronan's legs, leaning back mostly-reclined against his firm chest with the sheet cake balanced on his stomach. Gansey held it steady while Ronan reached around his shoulders and began putting cake into Gansey's mouth, much faster than Gansey himself would have but not so fast that he couldn't chew properly. It was nice, lying prone, exerting almost no effort except opening his mouth and closing it again as bite after bite of sugary frosting was delivered to him, but before the cake was even half gone he began to feel overtaxed, his belly rumbling in protest, and to his embarrassment he couldn't stop burping. 

“Sorry,” he said, holding up a hand to get Ronan to stop. “It's just so much sugar, heeurrrp, sorry, after the pies yesterday and the cheesecake and donuts this morning...”

“You feel sick?”

“Not sick, no,” Gansey said, and let out a deep belch that took some of the pressure off. “Just full. Okay. Ready again.”

He had to stop again a little while later to catch his breath, and Ronan helped him roll onto his side, letting the bed take the weight of his belly. He closed his eyes, wheezing, as Ronan stroked his flank and squeezed his fingers between the tight waistband of his pants and the irritated flesh of his hips, groping his ass a little over his khakis and kissing the soft skin of his lower back where it was starting to bulge over his pants. 

“You look really fucking good like this,” Ronan murmured. 

“Feel huge,” Gansey said. 

“Can eat on your side?”

“Oh yes.”

Ronan slid off the bed and kneeled on the floor, his face level with Gansey's face, and he ran his fingers across the crescent of underbelly that wouldn't stay in Gansey's t-shirt. He set the sheet cake on his lap and brought a bite to Gansey's lips. 

Gansey had eaten in this position more often than he cared to admit. Lying on his side on his twin dorm bed, curled around a belly that felt like it might split, slowly moving food around in his mouth and then swallowing it. But then he'd been feeding himself, and now Ronan was doing it for him, and he closed his eyes and relaxed into the taste of cake and the feeling of being stretched utterly to his limit, so round with sugar and calories that he could barely breathe. 

“It hurts,” Gansey said. “God. Why do I like this?”

“Cause you're a spoiled little fuck with no self control,” Ronan said, easing a bite of cake through Gansey's lips, and Gansey moaned a little, both at the words and at how full he was. 

“But if it's really hurting, you have to tell me,” Ronan added a second later. “Shit. We need a safeword, we shoulda talked about this months ago. How about Raven.”

“All right. But keep going for now,” Gansey said, and Ronan did. 

“When're you gonna stop, huh?” Ronan said a while later, his voice coming as if from faraway on a tide of more cake. “You're already so out of shape you get winded just making out.” He pushed Gansey's t-shirt up past his belly button and kissed a slice of stretchmarked skin, then fed him more cake. “Soon you're gonna have trouble putting on your goddamn socks.”

“I already do,” Gansey said thickly. “Ughhh god.”

Ronan swore quietly. “That belly's in the way, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“You're like one of those old kings,” Ronan said. “Sitting on your throne stuffing your face, getting fatter and fatter while the commonfolk eat, like, moldy potatoes. Now anybody who looks at you knows exactly how fucking rich and spoiled you are.”

“Raven,” said Gansey. 

Immediately Ronan stilled. “No more cake, or no more – the kind of stuff I was just saying?”

“Cake,” Gansey said. He was so full it was difficult to speak. “I like... ugghh. Ah. Oh god. I like when you... say... ah.” He was slurring his words.

“Okay,” Ronan said, and climbed onto the bed with him, hands finding the tightest spots in Gansey's distended stomach and pushing in, skillful and tender. “Shh, you're okay. You did so fucking good. There's barely a corner of that fucking cake left. You want me to help you change position?”

Gansey groaned at the thought of moving. 

“Man, what're Blue and Adam going to say when they see you?” Ronan said, sliding a palm down to cup his underbelly. “Your belly's so round, though it's getting wider, too. And you're getting this double chin.” He tickled it. “Poor baby. Gonna be sore tomorrow.”

Ronan had never called him “baby” before, and Gansey liked it so much that he got a case of the hiccups, which were extremely uncomfortable and forced him to accept Ronan's help in propping himself back up against the headboard. 

“Boo,” Ronan said, which made him laugh, which hurt even more. After a while the hiccups faded and Ronan put on a movie, some action thing that lulled Gansey into a doze, and he barely lifted his hips to help when Ronan worked his khakis off, tugging and struggling to get them pulled down over his thick thighs. Then he tucked him in, brushing crumbs off his pillow before he climbed in beside him, wrapping an arm under the curve of Gansey's stomach and putting his head on his shoulder. 

“Ronan Lynch,” Gansey murmured, half-sleeping, still half-propped up against the headboard. “Secret cuddler.”

“Don't fucking tell anyone,” Ronan said against Gansey's chest. 

“Your secret's safe with me,” Gansey said. 

:::

True to Ronan's word, Gansey's shirts no longer buttoned comfortably when they left the Gansey mansion for a few days in Henrietta. They gaped noticeably, showing the white of Gansey's undershirt, and he had to lie on his back and let Ronan minister to his khakis in order to get them done up – though Gansey protested that in all likelihood it was due to bloat, and he'd be able to button them himself if Ronan would stop pushing cake into his mouth for a minute. (In answer, of course, Ronan pushed cake into his mouth, which maybe was what Gansey had been asking for.)

Gansey's mother had been subdued since their argument at tea, and when he left she threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek. 

“I worry about you because I love you,” she said.

“I know,” he said. 

“I love you no matter what you look like,” she said. 

“I know.”

“But I do wish you'd --”

“Mother.”

“Fine!”

Gansey waited until the BMW was down the driveway and out the gate before he reclined the seat back far enough that he could reach his pants button and pop it open, and then set about undoing his shirt buttons as well. It felt symbolic as well as literal, an unbuttoning of the Gansey he'd had to wear for five days, and Ronan grinned at him as if he knew what he was thinking. Gansey grinned back, settling a hand comfortably on his tummy.

“Should we get some burgers for the road?” Ronan said.

“Definitely,” Gansey said.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this is my longest story yet, which is really saying something because I'm a serious binge-writer who needs to re-learn the glory of short 'n' sweet, but not today, not today. I hope you enjoy the last chapter, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING!!!
> 
> Warnings still stand.

The weather in Henrietta was lousy for the next few days, but Ronan didn't mind. He, Gansey, Adam and Blue all holed up at Monmouth for a couple nights. Opal opted to stay with Maura, with whom she'd developed a bond Ronan didn't quite understand, but seemed to be based in a mutual adoration of mixing together disgusting-tasting herbs and calling it tea. “My apprentice,” Maura called her. (“Try some, Kerah!” Opal had said, so proud of herself that Ronan had no choice but to choke down an entire mug of a particularly disgusting brew and pretend to like it.) Chainsaw, however, came with Ronan, and made a scene flying around the high ceilings and then tapping on the glass, asking to be let out, and then as soon as she'd been freed, tapping on the glass again in a request to be let back in. 

The four of them had not been together since Thanksgiving, and Blue and Adam had not seen Gansey in all that time. They knew he'd put on weight, and Ronan had tried in a roundabout way to impress upon them that the gain was perhaps more dramatic than they might be imagining, but still, Ronan could see their eyes go wide at the sight of Gansey. Blue in particular seemed to have trouble tearing her gaze away from Gansey's belly, though anytime Gansey himself turned towards her she was looking quite innocently anywhere but. 

Yet they made no comment. 

Instead they fell back into their old rhythms, trading college stories and talking quietly about Noah and Persephone and cracking jokes at one anothers' expense, and avoiding the topic of Gansey's weight altogether. Ronan saw them exchange a glance when Gansey took a moment to catch his breath after the flight of stairs, and another when he reached to open the window for Chainsaw and didn't notice that the plump lower curve of his belly had worked free of his shirt and was on glorious, stretch-marked display. 

Still, they said nothing. It was, ha ha, the elephant in the room. 

Ronan, because he was a fucking pervert, found this irritating. And he knew that Gansey, because he was a kinky little shit, would have liked some acknowledgment, too. But he wasn't certain how to bring it up, until eventually they were cozy in the living room, listening to the rain pound the roof and trying to decide what to eat for dinner.

Both Blue and Adam had loosened up in college, and they no longer protested when Ronan or Gansey bought food for the whole group, which was a fucking relief, and there was a quick debate between pizza and Chinese that ended firmly on Chinese. Blue and Adam brought up a menu on Adam's phone and brought their heads together to confer on what they wanted, but when Adam tried to hand the phone to Ronan, he refused. 

“But what do you two want?” Adam said. “You didn't even look at the menu.”

“All Chinese place are the same,” Ronan said. “I'll have beef and broccoli.”

“Gansey?” Adam said, and Gansey automatically glanced at Ronan. 

“He'll have peking dumplings,” said Ronan, in a tone that brooked no argument. “And an order of egg rolls, scallion pancakes, General Tso's chicken, shrimp lo mein, and sweet and sour pork. And beef fried rice. You get all that, Parrish?”

“That's half the menu,” Adam said, then blanched, eyes flicking to Gansey's belly and away. 

“Did you get it,” Ronan repeated.

“No, say it again.”

Ronan repeated it all, slowly and with a certain degree of relish, as Adam scribbled it down, and he could practically hear Blue's disapproving calculations of the cost. Yet neither she nor Adam commented on Ronan ordering for Gansey, nor did they comment on how fucking _much_ he'd ordered, and Ronan practically growled in frustration. He and Gansey had agreed to play it cool in front of them, at least for the weekend, and then perhaps break the news of their relationship over text, but it was taking all of Ronan's self-control not to put a hand on Gansey's belly and _claim_ it. 

When the food was delivered, Ronan took great pleasure in distributing the cartons. One each for Blue and Adam, one for Ronan, rice for all, and seven separate boxes for Gansey. Gansey scooted to the edge of the couch to reach the coffee table where the food was, and Ronan saw Blue and Adam staring as Gansey grunted over his belly, legs spread as he bent to fill his plate.

“Would anybody like an egg roll?” Gansey asked. “Dumpling? No?”

Mutely, Blue and Adam shook their heads, watching as he shrugged and put a dumpling whole into his mouth, then dumped the other five on top of his gigantic mound of noodles, rice, chicken and pork. He was a bit pink when he finally leaned back and settled on the couch next to Ronan, who slung an arm across the back, the closest he could come to touching Gansey in front of the others.

Gansey put the plate on his lap, and Ronan saw with delight that his belly nudged the edge of it, and he had a thirsty moment of wondering exactly how much weight Gansey would have to gain for his belly to overtake the lap-space the plate was currently occupying. As it stood now, Gansey was round enough that hunching over his belly to eat didn't look entirely comfortable. 

He watched Gansey tuck in, then looked up to find Blue and Adam's eyes locked on Gansey as well, and he'd suddenly had enough. Time to air this shit out. 

“Quit staring,” Ronan snapped, and Gansey looked up, startled, as both Blue and Adam turned quickly away, Adam's cheeks bright red.

There was a moment of extremely awkward silence, and then Gansey said, sounding almost relieved, “It's all right. Look, I've put on quite a lot of weight. I know that.”

“Yes, you have,” Adam said. “But with all due respect, that wasn't what we were staring at.”

“What, then?” Gansey said, and Ronan furrowed his brow, equally baffled. Slowly, Blue raised a hand to the collar of her shirt, and just as slowly Ronan realized that his arm, the one he'd flung across the back of the couch, had somehow insinuated itself downwards, and was now in fact draped around Gansey's shoulder – and his hand had somehow tucked itself into the neckline of Gansey's t-shirt, his fingers pressed into the soft skin of Gansey's collarbone, thumb moving slow circles on Gansey's neck. Ronan yanked his hand back, but it was too little, too late, and there was nothing to do but set his jaw and put his hand right back where it had been. 

“So me and Gansey are dating,” said Ronan. 

“Fucking finally!” Blue crowed, and Adam grinned at them like a proud parent. 

“What do you mean, finally?” Gansey said, and Adam dropped his head into his hands while Blue rolled her eyes so hard Ronan was surprised they didn't fall out. Neither of them deigned to answer. 

“Everybody shut up and eat,” Ronan said. “The food's getting cold.”

“What, we're not allowed to ask questions?” Blue said. “Like when, and how, and how long?”

Gansey had his mouth full, so Ronan said, “Maybe after I have a few more beers. Or maybe never.”

As always, Gansey was still eating long after everyone else was done. He finished his first plate and began shifting his weight to lean forward and get more, but Ronan took it from him before he could move, and without a word began to fill it high again. He performed an impressive feat of engineering to get the eggrolls to balance along the sides, and when he handed it back to Gansey, Blue said, “Awwww.”

“No,” said Ronan fiercely. 

While Gansey ate, Ronan and Blue drank, and even Adam had a beer or two. Gansey had his fair share, as well, and by the time he was slurping up his last noodle and handing his empty plate to Ronan with a heavy sigh, everyone was bright-eyed and loose. Gansey leaned against the armrest with a heavy sigh, propping his head up on one hand and burping as discreetly as possible, then arched his back to re-settle his belly. Ronan recognized the gesture as one of discomfort and put a brief hand on Gansey's thigh, a sympathetic touch. 

“I ate too much,” Gansey said, as if eating too much wasn't something he did several times a day.

“There's still half a container of white rice,” Ronan noticed, and handed it over. 

“Well,” Adam said, watching Gansey begin to slowly finish it. “I guess we don't have to wonder how you, um...”

“I don't know why people seem so confused about the _how_ of it,” Gansey said, through a mouthful of rice. He paused to take a shallow breath and let out another small, stifled belch behind his fist. “It's simple enough. I ate a lot, and so I gained a lot of weight.”

“Sorry,” Adam said immediately, “sorry, this beer's gone to my head. I only meant --”

“Adam, don't worry,” Gansey said. “I've come to terms with it.” He lowered his fork for a moment, dug the heel of his hand into the swollen side of his belly, then kept eating. “My mother, on the other hand...”

“Oh god,” Adam said emphatically. 

“Ronan wanted to sic you on her, Jane,” said Gansey. “To talk about – feminism, or – what did you say, Ronan?”

“Fuck diets,” said Ronan.

“Fuck 'em,” Blue agreed. She was lying on her stomach, legs waving in the air like a little kid. “Yeah, let me at her, Gansey. I'm a college girl now, watch out.”

“You're a drunk girl,” Adam said, touching her hair. 

“That too,” Blue said, and got to all fours, then sat back on her haunches. “Hey Gansey. Can I poke it?”

“What?” Gansey said. He handed the empty rice carton to Ronan and pressed a hand over his navel, wincing. “Ugh.”

“Your belly,” Blue said. “It's so round, it's practically begging to be poked.”

“That's what I tell him,” said Ronan, poking Gansey none-to-gently.

“Ow!” said Gansey. “Go ahead, Jane, as long as you're nicer about it than Ronan.”

Blue scooted over and planted herself between Gansey's legs, putting one hand on his knee to hold herself up, and Ronan worked very hard to keep from thinking about the last time Gansey'd had someone kneeling between his legs. It had been Ronan, and it had not been for the purposes of poking his belly. Or, not entirely. Generally, women didn't do much for Ronan, but he had to admit there was something appealing about how small Blue looked, kneeling there with her little hand on Gansey's chunky leg, and when he accidentally met Gansey's eyes with their dilated pupils, he saw that Gansey was having similar thoughts. 

“If you're gonna poke it, poke it,” Ronan growled, suddenly frustrated with the presence of other people in the room.

“Jealous?” said Blue archly, and instead of poking she reached out and laid a palm across Gansey's belly button and tried to jiggle him. “I thought you'd be softer.”

“Well, I'm very full right now,” Gansey said, and then Blue did poke him, tenderly, right where her palm had been a moment before. Then she poked the side of his belly where it curved and became a fat hip. Then she poked the strip of bare skin that had escaped the hem of his t-shirt without his noticing. 

“Oh, you're soft right here,” she said. 

“Okay Sargent, that's enough,” Ronan said. “Parrish, tame your woman.”

“Fuck right off,” Blue said, but she moved away from Gansey and said, “Adam, it's a very satisfying poke experience. You ought to try.”

“Hey now,” Gansey said. 

“There's someone else I'd rather poke,” Adam said, reaching for her, and then made a face as he played the words back in his head. “Oh damn, stop laughing, you know that's not what I meant.”

“You mean you don't want to poke me?” Blue said. 

“I feel as if I'd like to play some pool,” Adam said with great dignity. “Ronan?”

Ronan, glad for the distraction from Gansey and his pokeability, hurled himself to his feet, then paused for long enough to deliver a quick pat to Gansey's stomach, which gurgled in response. As soon he was headed towards the pool table, he saw Blue pull herself up on the couch to take Ronan's place, and put her head on Gansey's shoulder. Ronan turned back to glare at her, but it was purfunctory. He did not mind. 

“You know what,” he heard Blue say as Adam set up the balls. “I think I like you like this.”

Ronan turned as Gansey laid a hand on his overfull belly, rubbing the firm bloat of it and sighing a little. “I think I do, too,” he said. 

“So it doesn't bother you?” Blue said. “How much you've gained?”

“That's a complicated question, Jane,” said Gansey. “Right now it's bothering me a little, because these pants don't fit very well and I'm not entirely comfortable.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“I know,” said Gansey. “No, it doesn't bother me, not really. Not the way you mean it, anyway.”

“Good,” she said, and then, in what she obviously thought was a quiet voice, “Because it clearly doesn't bother Ronan.”

“No, thank god, it does not,” Gansey said, laughter in his tone, and he met Ronan's eyes over the pool table.

“Lynch,” Adam was saying. “Hey, Lynch. Lynch! Are you gonna take your shot or not?”

:::

The last month and a half of the semester went by in a blur for both of them. Ronan had his hands full getting spring planting done and preparing the land for summer crops, and Gansey was caught up in a whirlwind of finals and take-home exams and working with Stella towards publishing their paper by the end of the school year. 

Gansey had gained a few pounds over Easter break, but there was so much schoolwork to be done that he didn't have the brainspace for the pleasurable yet somewhat mind-numbing bouts of all-day eating he'd been indulging in for months, and so his weight, which had been climbing steadily since the moment he'd set foot on the Harvard campus, finally hit a plateau. 

He also began lifting weights. 

Ronan had very complicated feelings about all of this. 

“No,” Gansey said firmly over the phone. “It's not because of my mother. It's because I want to, I promise. It's just, I've put on nearly 90 pounds in less than a year, and I haven't had any time to get used to it. It's a lot of weight to be carrying around all of a sudden, and it'd be easier if I had got some muscle to help me.” He cleared his throat and added, “Plus, it'll be nice to let all this settle before, um...”

“Before you come to Henrietta for the summer and I assault you with cake?”

“I wouldn't use the word assault,” Gansey said. “But yes, basically.”

Ronan was somewhat mollified once he was convinced that Gansey had begun lifting weights for himself, and not out of some fucked-up shame-spiral his mother had tipped him into, but something about it made him anxious, too. Despite himself, he was worried that a non-gaining Gansey was a Gansey with no need for a Ronan. 

“Why does everyone keep saying _finally_ when we tell them about us?” Gansey texted, after Henry Cheng had visited for the weekend (and gifted Ronan with about a hundred new candid pictures of Gansey doing everything from sleeping to playing croquet to drinking beer with a straw).

“Maybe because you made me fucking pine for you like an asshole for four years?” Ronan replied. 

“You were not pining. Were you?”

Ronan did not know how it was possible to be so smart, and so dense. “God. Yes.”

“Oh,” Gansey wrote. “I sure wish I'd known that earlier.”

But Gansey had not said whether or not he'd felt the same way, and Ronan hadn't asked. Ronan could not help but feel, however, that they'd only gotten together in the end because of their shared, ahem, interests, and now that Gansey was not actively participating in those interests, he'd lose interest also in Ronan. 

However, that did not seem to be the case. 

Far from phasing Ronan out, Gansey filled up the time he usually spent talking about eating, to simply talking, and rather than weakening their bond, Ronan was stunned to find it growing stronger. Ronan himself would never be good at the phone, but he very much enjoyed listening to Gansey prattle on, and sometimes in the evenings he'd set his computer up to video chat, and he'd read quietly in the living room to Opal while on-screen Gansey did his homework hundreds of miles away in Boston. 

It was the kind of quiet intimacy Ronan most missed from the days when he'd had a family. 

At the end of the semester, Gansey flew Adam out to meet him so they could drive the Pig back to Henrietta together, in case she broke down – which she did, three times, in three different states. The break-downs forced them to stay the night in a motel halfway, and rather than give in to pining for their respective travelers, Ronan and Blue spent a disgustingly civilized evening at Fox Way, playing Scrabble with Mr. Grey and requesting that Adam and Gansey take photos of one another in increasingly ridiculous poses. 

It was evening of the next day by the time Gansey dropped Adam off at Monmouth and made his way to the Barns alone. Full of a jittering excitement at the prospect of his arrival, Ronan had thrown himself into work until he'd burned off the sharpest edge with physical exhaustion, and was slouched on the porch with a beer when he heard the telltale yowl of the Pig's engine. 

Gansey parked, got out, and was immediately greeted by a thrilled Opal, who flung herself at him with such force that Ronan was surprised Gansey kept his footing. Then again, Gansey would be hard to push over – he was extraordinarily solid, and Ronan could see in just a few brief movements that he was more comfortable than he had been over Easter, more sure in his body. He came up the walk towards Ronan, Opal clinging to his hand, looking casual and gorgeous in a pair of jeans and the kind of t-shirt that looked so soft it'd probably cost more than the car, the kind of t-shirt that showed off every curve of his body: the soft fold of his chest over his belly, the roll at his hip, the swell of his love handles and the deep crease of his belly button. 

If Gansey hadn't gained any weight, he most certainly had not lost any. 

However, the shirt also showed off a pair of arms and a set of shoulders that Ronan swore were bigger and broader than last time he'd seen them, and not just with fat – but maybe that was his imagination filling in the blanks. 

“If you're done ogling me, Lynch, you could come over here and give me a proper hello,” Gansey said. 

“Opal,” Ronan said. “Remember our deal?”

The deal was, she could be the first to say hello to Gansey if she got the hell out of the way once she had. 

“I'm going to go scare the deer,” she told Gansey, and took off, hooves clattering. Gansey watched her go, then turned to Ronan, paying back the ogle with interest. 

“Looks like I'm not the only one who's been hitting the weights,” Gansey said, moving towards the porch, and Ronan tried very hard not to smile. 

“It's called manly labor,” Ronan said. “You should try it.” He paused. “On second thought. You shouldn't.”

“No? What should I do instead?” Gansey said, so close now that his belly was barely an inch from touching Ronan's. 

It amazed Ronan, how well their bodies fit together. One moment they were standing apart and the next they were seamlessly entangled, Ronan pulled tight to Gansey's side, Gansey's hand on his cheek, his arm slung around Ronan's waist, one of Ronan's hands coming to rest on the side of Gansey's belly and the other wrapped around his shoulders, and even though Ronan was an inch or so taller there was something about the way Gansey held him that made him feel small. 

Ronan had never been kissed by anybody else, but he couldn't imagine there was another person on this earth who could kiss him as well as Gansey could, with a passion that was even more powerful for the restraint Ronan could feel behind it. Gansey's kisses were tender and certain and bottomlessly hungry, and Ronan rushed to fill that endless free-fall of desire. He threw himself in. 

Finally, when they'd finished saying their hellos, Ronan led Gansey into the kitchen and sat him down at the table and put a thick slice of homemade chocolate cake in front of him, and a tall glass of milk from a cow Ronan had dreamed only days ago. 

“That's an appetizer,” Ronan said. “There's lasagna, too, and fresh bread and butter. Opal churned it.”

“I feel as if I've stepped back a century,” Gansey said, picking up his fork while Ronan watched him and tried not to look too lovesick. 

“You look good,” Ronan said, because it needed to be said. “How do you feel?”

“Good,” Gansey said, mouth full, and tapped his belly. “I've gotten far more used to carrying this around, and lifting weights helps enormously.”

Ronan helped himself to a handful of Gansey's bicep, which felt undeniably firmer than he remembered, and then to a grope of Gansey's thick thigh. “So you...” He wasn't quite sure how to bring it up. “Do you want to keep – are you still into, um...”

“I want to eat everything you've cooked for me,” Gansey said. “And then some. I want to eat until I have to lie down, and then I don't want to get up for a long while, maybe the whole summer. I want to eat until these pants don't have a hope of buttoning. I want to eat until I have to get used to my body all over again.” He took a big bite of cake and looked Ronan in the eye. “Does that answer your question?”

Ronan swallowed. “Yeah.”

That night, Gansey ate an entire pan of lasagna, most of a loaf of bread, many enormous chunks of butter, and three pieces of chocolate cake. He wanted to eat more cake but he was out of practice, and as it stood was so full he was barely able to speak. Ronan installed him on the couch in the den, propped up by a silly amount of cushions, his belly so round and tight that the indent of his belly button beneath his shirt had flattened. Opal came bounding in from the forest covered in mud and leaves and threw herself down in front of the fireplace, chattering about a bird she'd chased across the entire acreage of the Barns, while Gansey nodded and smiled and made occasional, breathless comments, and Ronan experienced a contentment so powerful it felt dangerous. 

That night, he could not sleep. He wrapped himself around Gansey, his knobby-kneed legs tangled in Gansey's soft ones, his arm slung carefully under Gansey's gurgling belly, and listened to Gansey's noisy, whistled breaths. Asleep, Gansey looked so unguarded it made Ronan want to break something. He felt wild with it, felt like he could run to Henrietta and back and still be frenetic with energy, but he didn't move except to curl tighter around Gansey.

Too tightly, apparently. 

Gansey came blearily awake with an adorable snort, and Ronan immediately loosened his deathgrip on Gansey's hip, guilty. 

“Y'okay?” Gansey murmured. 

“Fine,” Ronan said, but buried his face in the back of Gansey's neck, overcome with an emotion he couldn't quite name. 

With some difficulty and a few grunts, Gansey rolled over until he was on his other side and facing Ronan, throwing a thick thigh over Ronan's legs, his belly settling across Ronan's hip. It was warm and heavy, and so was Gansey's arm when he wrapped it around Ronan's shoulders and pulled him close. “Shhh,” Gansey said, obviously still half-asleep. 

Usually it was the other way around, Ronan spooning Gansey, because usually he did not like the feeling of being constrained... But suddenly he found it enormously comforting, Gansey's still-full gut a weight across Ronan's side, his doughy leg holding Ronan down, his arm like an anchor on Ronan's chest. 

“Shhh,” Gansey said again, drifting off, his breath evening back out. And just like that, Ronan fell asleep. 

:::

Almost immediately, summer took on a rhythm.

Each morning at dawn, Gansey would be briefly woken by the sound of Ronan getting up, and he'd watch with blurry unglassed eyesight as Ronan strapped himself into his coveralls and got ready for a morning of sunrise farm chores: feeding the animals, milking the cows, collecting the eggs. Then Gansey would drift back to sleep for the next few hours, until he woke again to the smell of breakfast, and the sight of Ronan nudging open the bedroom door wth Gansey's breakfast tray, always laden with cream and homemade butter and bright yellow eggs, and thick-cut bacon from the pig farm down the road. On any given morning it would be, say, butter-drenched toast, homemade plum jam, heavy rashers of bacon, a five-egg cheese omelette, a fresh scone, a cup of sugary coffee and a tall frothy glass of cream-topped milk, and Gansey would work himself into a sitting position with the tray on his lap and start eating before he'd even come fully awake. Sometimes Ronan would sit by him, kissing along his jaw or tickling the broad curve of his belly, but more often than not he had too much to do, and Gansey was left to eat breakfast alone at his leisure.

Once the tray was cleared, Gansey would lean back against the pillows and let himself digest for a while, enjoying the warm stripes of sun that filtered in through Ronan's curtains, and then he'd swing his legs over the side of the bed and get dressed before heading downstairs. He was co-writing another myths paper with Bella as well as a solicited one of his own on Welsh monarch lineage, and most of his day was spent in research or correspondence. Ronan had cleared off a gorgeous 19th century desk in the corner of the living room, and that was where Gansey had set up his “office,” though after just a week the surface was already so laden with papers and books that he could barely fit his laptop on it. 

All morning he'd work, both on his papers and on whatever snack Ronan had left for him in the kitchen, usually pastries: six perfect cupcakes with a sign that said “Before lunch,” or an apple pie with a note reading, “Before dinner.” If Ronan hadn't had time to bake, there were frozen pizzas and boxes of macaroni and cheese and bags of Doritos to be eaten, which Gansey would, dutifully, orange dust limning the edges of his folders. 

Ronan came in for lunch around one, sweaty and dirt-smudged and not yet quite tired enough to be calm. Gansey was coming to understand that Ronan was, in many ways, like a dog that needed to be properly exercised lest he chew through all the furniture, while he himself was more like a cat, content to lie around in patches of sunlight. He'd sit at the kitchen table and watch Ronan put lunch together with great enthusiastic force: sawing through loaves of bread, thwacking huge pats of butter into cast-iron pans, hacking off great slices of cheese, whirling around every so often to poke a bite of something into Gansey's mouth: a piece of cheddar, a spoonful of taco-seasoned beef, a forkful of noodles. 

Gansey would eat whatever Ronan put in front of him, piles of grilled cheeses or bowl after bowl of creamy soup, and he'd gotten into the habit of finishing everything off with a glass or two of the rich milk Ronan got from his dream cows, so creamy it was almost yellow. He ate until his tummy was packed and throbbing, ate until he had trouble catching his breath and his face was pink and sweaty, ate until Ronan was practically vibrating with arousal. He ate until it was difficult to hike the twelve stairs up to the bedroom, but he did hike them, because post-lunch was when Gansey was sleepiest and Ronan was at his most tumultuous, and they'd learned that it was a very good combination.

Gansey loved the pure laziness of letting Ronan undress him, and kiss him, and run his eager hands wherever he wanted, loved submitting completely to Ronan's touch; and Ronan loved the control of it, loved how sweet and soft and pliant Gansey was beneath him, loved the little breathy sounds he made, the way he moaned and panted and writhed beneath the weight of his swollen belly. Loved how he fell asleep nearly immediately afterwards, exhausted by the simple exertion of eating and coming, while Ronan left him snoring as he went back out for another five or six hours worth of hard labor in the fields. 

For the first week, Gansey tried to stick to his weight-lifting routine, but he was always so full, and lazy, and there was something so unspeakably delicious about doing _absolutely nothing_ while Ronan worked so goddamn hard, that he gave up after just six days. So most days, the only exercise he got was walking up and down the stairs a couple times, and out to the front porch to sit with Ronan as the sun went down. Sundown was when Opal re-emerged from wherever she went during daylight, and it quickly became a lovely routine: Gansey would finish off whatever snack he'd been assigned before dinner, Ronan would have a beer, and Opal would chatter and barrage them with questions and braid Ronan's bootlaces together. 

Opal was a far cry from the terrified Orphan Girl she'd been when Gansey first met her. For one thing, it was now clear that she wasn't a child, not really, though she had many hallmarks of childhood: innocence, sweetness, a boundless and mercurial affection. Yet she was more. She was a wild thing, a dream-creature who lived by her own rules, except when she was living by Ronan's rules; which were, in a sense, her own rules, but if Gansey thought too hard about this, it made his head hurt. Ronan, on the other hand, didn't seem affected by any complicated thoughts where Opal was concerned – he simply accepted her, and cared for her when she needed caring for, and ignored her when she needed ignoring. 

Ronan accepted Opal's adoration in a way he couldn't accept Gansey's, which Gansey understood in a certain sense. Opal's love was pure, unfettered, and Ronan understood exactly where it came from. She loved him because she was _of_ him. Of Gansey's love he was more suspicious, because he could not explain it. 

Gansey could not explain it, either. But, he wanted to say to Ronan, who could explain this kind of love? This kind of desire? He could tell Ronan a million times that he was magnificent, and beautiful, and awe-inspiring and hilarious and dangerous and clever – and he did tell Ronan all these things, over and over – but they did not function as explanation. 

The closest Gansey came to explaining his love was when he'd eaten so much that every inch of him hurt to move – when he'd eaten six enormous bowls of beef stew, and a whole baguette, and what was probably half a cup of butter, and a pot of mashed potatoes, and a block of cheddar cheese, and a pint of chocolate ice cream blended with cream and peanut butter, and it was nearly midnight, and Ronan was gently pressing small bites of brownie into Gansey's panting lips, his belly ballooned heavily into his lap, his skin bloated so tight he could practically feel new stretch-marks forming, and he could hear himself groaning but he couldn't control it, and Ronan had a strong, soothing hand stroking the painful shelf of Gansey's packed tummy, and his other hand was playing with Gansey's hair, or pinching the chub of his cheek, or thumbing the crease that was developing at his neck... 

Somehow, that felt like an explanation. _Because I trust you, Ronan. Because my body is yours to do with as you will. Because you touch me like you worship me, and I will do anything to be worthy of such a touch. Because you are you and I'm me and here we are._

It was no wonder, then, that by mid-June Gansey couldn't button his pants. 

Gaining again after a couple months break was heady and dizzying, the same out-of-control feeling of fear and elation he'd felt all school year, but compounded by the fact that the weight he was adding now was pushing him into a whole new category. He'd gotten big, by Easter – had added a broad, round belly and a pudgy ass and several inches of soft flesh to his thighs – but he'd still been merely _big_ , overweight but not extraordinarily so. 

Now he was getting fat. 

“Semantics,” Ronan said, though his dismissive tone was belied by the way he ran his hand appraisingly down Gansey's belly. 

“It's not semantics,” Gansey said. “Or, it is, but it's a semantics I can _feel._ ”

“Okay,” Ronan said. “What do you feel?”

It was ten in the morning and they were in bed, an empty pie tin on the nightstand, Gansey sticky and full and propped against the headboard in a t-shirt and boxers, a pale curve of tummy poking out from the bottom of his shirt and resting on his thighs even in this leaned-back position. It was pouring rain outside, and Ronan was taking a rare day off, which he'd taken full advantage of by feeding Gansey a pie and a pint of vanilla ice cream for breakfast. 

“I feel heavy,” Gansey said. “I mean, look at this.” He gripped his belly. “It was hard enough to tie my shoes, but now I can barely hold my breath for long enough to make a single bow. And my arms are getting stretchmarks, look.”

Ronan leaned to give said stretchmark an appreciative nip. “What about your tits?” he said.

“I think your use of that word speaks for itself,” Gansey said, and Ronan reached around to cup one of Gansey's pudgy pecs, squeezing it gently. 

“Wanna stop?” Ronan said.

“No,” Gansey said. “I just...” He heaved a sigh, and surprised himself with a soft belch. “Excuse me. No, I don't want to stop.”

“You know it'd be cool if you did,” Ronan said. “Right? I'd still – I mean, I'm into this, obviously, but I'm... into other things, too. You. I'm into you.”

Gansey couldn't help but smile. “And I'm into... pie.”

Ronan laughed. “Clearly.”

:::

Even if it was semantics, Gansey found himself fixating on the word in the coming weeks. Rocking a few times to get enough momentum to push up from the low couch, he thought: I'm fat. His belly nudging the table as he tried to move his chair closer, he thought: I'm fat. Resting a plate on the mound of his gut, he thought: I'm fat. 

Fat, and getting fatter. By early August he'd put on twenty-five pounds, which put him at 285 pounds, which meant he'd gained over a hundred pounds since the previous August, which was frankly astonishing. 

This must be how pregnant women felt, he thought one night, when his belly had knocked the bottle of shampoo off the shelf in the shower and he found himself dreading the process of bending down to get it. He had to peer around his belly even to see it at his feet, and as he began to squat he felt the heavy sag and press of his tummy throwing him off-balance, and he put a hand to the slippery side of the shower but it didn't help steady him. 

He _could_ get the bottle of shampoo, he knew that. It was uncomfortable, but nowhere near impossible, or even really that difficult. But something made him pause, and without fully analyzing his next move, he tilted back his head and shouted, “Ronan!”

Ronan was in the next room, and it only took a moment for him to poke his head through the door, forehead creased in a scowl that meant worry, though it smoothed out considerably when his eyes took in the sight of Gansey unclothed and sudsy behind the clear shower curtain. “Yeah?” he said. “Did you... uh... need me?”

“I've dropped the shampoo,” Gansey said, and laid a complacent hand over the shelf of his belly, drumming his fingers nonchalantly. “Would you pick it up for me?”

Ronan licked his lips, and without another word, he came forward into the bathroom and pulled aside the shower curtain. Uncaring of the water that sprayed his head and shoulders, he leaned into the shower and picked up the shampoo, and put it very gently into Gansey's waiting hand. 

Then, with a low curse, he climbed in fully clothed, and pressed Gansey up against the tiled wall, and it was quite some time before Gansey managed to actually use the shampoo. 

After that, Gansey began asking Ronan to do things for him more often. Sighing around a mouthful of cake, he'd ask Ronan to pull down his shirt where it was riding up over the swell of his hip. Coming in from the porch, he'd ask Ronan to kneel at his feet and unlace his sneakers for him. At night, he asked Ronan to tug off his socks. 

It became such a habit that he accidentally did it in front of Adam and Blue when he and Ronan were at Monmouth for dinner one evening. Blue and Adam had been staying there for the summer while Gansey stayed at the Barns, though they'd drawn the line at accepting the use of a car that wasn't a complete pile of garbage, so thanks to Adam's Hondoyota they'd been Monmouth-bound more often than not. 

The gang had gone simple and ordered pizza, and Gansey was one and a half pies deep and feeling it. He was wearing a pair of khakis he'd ordered online when he'd outgrown the pants he'd arrived with at the beginning of the summer, and now, just a month and a half later, the new pants were unbearably tight. He kept reaching to try and adjust them, but his underbelly was so bloated and round and soft that it was difficult to get a good grip on the button without lifting his belly with his other hand. 

So it seemed only natural for him to lean back with a groan and say, “Ronan, would you get this damn button undone for me?”

Even as Ronan's pupils began to dilate predictably, Gansey realized that Blue and Adam were exchanging raised eyebrows with one another. 

“Lean back further,” Ronan said, all business, and though Gansey was blushing terribly he did as Ronan said, arching his back to help give Ronan better access. Nimbly, Ronan held up Gansey's heavy stomach with one hand and flicked the button open with the other, then let his belly sag back into his lap and gave it a hard, loving pat. 

“So it's like that,” Blue said. 

“Like what?” Ronan snapped, and Gansey stuffed a bite of pizza into his mouth so he didn't have to answer. Blue just grinned knowingly. 

“Don't be embarrassed,” she said. “Adam likes to dress up in --”

“Blue!” Adam yelped, and Blue let out a Calla-like cackle.

:::

That night, when they got back to the barns, Ronan pushed Gansey onto the bed and knelt between his spread legs, bracing his belly with both hands like he was weighing it. “So fucking lazy,” Ronan said. “Can't even unbutton your own pants. You spend all day in here, stuffing your goddamn face and outgrowing all your expensive clothes, and I'm out there working the fields like a fucking peasant. God, you're just lying around on the couch, putting on so much fucking weight, doing whatever the hell you want because you're so rich and fat and spoiled, and I fucking _toil_ all day.”

“Don't talk to me like that,” Gansey said, and Ronan immediately looked stricken and sorry. “When you address me,” Gansey continued, “You will address me by my proper title. A vassal shouldn't speak to his lord that way.”

Ronan's eyes grew bright like hot coals, and he inclined his head, almost in a bow. “Forgive me, my lord,” he said. “I forgot my place.”

“What is your place?” Gansey said, thrilling. 

“To serve you,” Ronan said immediately. “To serve your fat, lazy ass. My lord.”

“Then fulfill your duties,” Gansey said. “Serve me.”

“Always,” said Ronan.

And he did.


End file.
